Diakonoff - Afrasian Languages (1988)

I. M. DIAKONOFF

■■■■l AFRASIAN HI
LANGUAGES ■■

USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

INSTITUTE OF ORIENTAL STUDIES

LANGUAGES
OF ASIA
AND AFRICA

The series was founded
by Prof. G. P. SERDYUCHENKO

I. M. DIAKONOFF

AFRASIAN LANGUAGES

Moscow

NAUKA

Central Department of Orienal Literature
1988

fl 92

Translated from the Russian
by A. A. Korolev and V.Ya.Porkhomovsky

Editorial Board

V.M.SoIntsev (Chairman),
H.A.Lisovekaya (Scientific Secretary),
I.F.Vardul, L. B. Nikolsky ,
lu.1a.Plam, V.D.Podberezskaya

Edited by
A.lu.Militarev

This edition is a revised version of Semito-Hamitic Lan-
guages published in 1965 both in Russian and in English. The
monograph sums up the newer studies by foreign scholars and
by this author and his school. The book deals, from the his-
torical and comparative viewpoint, with phonology, morpholo-
gy and, partially, with the syntax of the major Afrasian
languages, and analyses samples of texts. The translation is
copyedited by I.M.Diakonoff .

„ 4602010000-176 ... , no
R 0'l3'(0'2)'-aa K6-6-68-88

© Nauka Publishers, Central Department
of Oriental Literature, 1988

to the memory
of

N.V.Jusmanov and A.P.Riftin

EDITORS’ NOTE

The "Languages of Asia and Africa" series was founded in 1959
by the late Prof. G.P.Serdyuchenko, under whose general supervision
more than 75 language monographs were published. These publications
met with considerable interest among Soviet and foreign readers.

The publication of the series has been continued under the Edi-
torial Board.

The monographs in the series describe either the living languages
of African and Asian countries or the languages of the past which
played an important historical role in the life and culture of the
peoples of the East.

The series is intended for the general linguists and historians—
research workers and postgraduate students as well as lecturers and
undergraduates of the Oriental philological and historical depart-
ments of universities. The monographs may be useful for readers in-
terested in general linguistics or those studying Oriental langua-
ges.

Below we give the full list of monographs which have appeared
to date in Russian and in English.

Essays published in Russian:

1959

H.B.IOlIIMaHOB. AMXapCKHH H3bIK .

(N.V. Jushmanov. The Amharic. Lan-
guage) .

1960

M.C.AHAPOHOB. TaMHJIBCKHH H3bIK.

(M.S. Andronov. The Tamil Langua-
ge) .

H.A.Ubophhkob. ,R3biK nymTy.

(N. A.Dvoryankov . The Pashto Lan-
guage) .

H . K . flMHTpueB . TypeuKHfl H3biK.

(N.K.Dmitriyev. The Turkish Lan-
guage) .

Jl.H.flopoi}>eeBa. fl3biK (jjapcn-KaCy-

JIH.

(L.N.Dorofeyeva. The Farsi-Kabu-
li Language).

r.A.3orpa$. H3hkh Hhhhh, IlaKH—
CTaHa, UeftnoHa h Henana.
(G.A.Zograf. The Languages of
India, Pakistan, Ceylon and
Nepal) .

1-3 287

5

B .B . 0BaHOB , B.H.TonopoB. CaH-

CKPHT .

(V.V. Ivanov, V.N.Toporov. San-
skrit) .

T.E.KaTeHHHa. B3biK xhhhh.

(T . Y . Katenina . Hind i) .

K).H.Ma3yp. KopeaCKHH H3biK.

(Y.N. Mazur. The Korean Language).

E.H.MauHHa. fl3biK cyaxHJin.

(Y.N.Myachina. The Swahili Lan-
guage) .

3.H.Han*cHn. CoBpeMeHHbiii yftryp-
CKHH K3blK •

(E.N.Nadzhip. The Modern Uigur
Language) .

B.M.HacwioB. H3MK opxoHo-eHHceii-
CKHX naMHTHHKOB.

(V.M.Nasilov. The Language of

the Orkhon-Yenisei Inscript-
ions) .

3.H.neTpyHHueBa. H3biK Tenyry.

(Z.N.Petrunicheva. The Telugu
Language) .

lO.A.PySHHVHK. CoBpeMeHHbiii nep-
CHflCKHH H3blK.

(Y.A.Rubinchik. The Modern Pers-
ian Language) .

T.H.CaHweeB. CoBpeMeHHbm moh-
rOJIbCKHH H3bIK.

1961

B.fl.Ea6axaeBi AccaMCKHH H3biK.

(V.D.Babakayev. The Assamese
Language) .

H). A. ToproHHeB . KXMepCKHH H3bIK.

(Y.A.Gorgoniyev. The Khmer Lan-
guage) .

M. A. KopocTOBijeB . ErmieTCKHfi
H3blK .

(M.A.Korostovtsev. The Egyp-
tian Language) .

H.H.Kopotkob, K).B.Po>KfleCTBeH-
ckhh, F.n.CepflioueHKO,
B.M.CoJiHijeB . KHTaftcKHii

H3bIK .

(N.N. Korotkov, Y.V. Rozhde-
stvensky, G.P.Serdyuchenko,
V.M.Solntsev. The Chinese
Language) .

K. K. KypnoeB . KypflCKHH H3biK.

(K.K.Kurdoyev. The Kurdish Lan-
guage) .

H.B.OxoTHHa. H3wk 3yny.

(G.D . Sanzheyev. The Modern Mon-
golian Language) .

M.A.CMHpHOBa. H3biK xayca.

(M. A. Smirnova. The Hausa Lan-
guage) .

B.M.ConHqeB, K). K.JIexoMaeB ,

T.T.MxHTapaH, H.H. TneboBa.
BbeTHaMCKHfl H3bDC.

(V.M.Solntsev, Y.K.Lekomtsev ,
T.T.Mkhitaryan, I.I.Glebo-
va. The Vietnamese Language).

A. C.TecejiKHH, H.O.AjineBa. Hhho-

He3HftCKHii H3bIK .

(A. S .Tesyolkin, N.F. Alieva.
Bahasa Indonesia) .

E.X.TonaeBa. MoHroJibCKHe h3mkh
h flnajieKTbi KhTaa.

(B.Kh.Todayeva. The Mongolian
Languages and Dialects of
China) .

H.H.TojiCTaa. H3biK nantpicabH.

(N.I. Tolstaya. The Punjabi Lan-
guage) .

H.H.®enbflMaH. BnoHCKnft H3biK.

(N. I .Feldman. The Japanese Lan-
guage) .

B. A.OponoBa. EejiynaccKHH H3bix.

(V. A. Frolova. The Baluchi Lan-
guage) .

(N.V.Okhotina. The Zulu Language) .

KJ.H.IInaM, Jl.H.MopeB, M.O.Oomh-
veBa. TaftcKHfi «3tiK.

(Y.Y-Plam, L.N.Morev, M.F.Fomi-
cheva. The Thai Language)..

KJ.H.Pepnx. THSercKHii B3tiK .

(Y.N. Roerich. The Tibetan Lan-
guage) .

r.n.CepflioueHKO. HzcyaHCKMft H3biK.

(G.P.Serdyuchenko. The Chuan
Language) .

A.C.TecejiKHH. HBaHCKHH H3blK.

(A. S .Tesyolkin. The Javanese
Language) .

r.lU.UlapbaTOB . CoBpeMeHHbiii apa6-
CKHH H3bIK.

(G.Sh.Sharbatov. The Modern
Arabic Language) .

H.n.HKOBJieBa. S3biK raHfla (ny-
raHfla) .

[i.P. Yakovleva. The Ganda (Lu-
ganda) Language] .

6

1962

M. C . Ahhpohob . #3biK KaHKaaa.

(M. S .Andronov. The Kannada Lan-
guage) .

3.M.flbIMIIIHIJ. fl3bIK ypny.

1963

B.fl.ApaKHH. MajibramcKHH H3biK.

(V.D. Arakin. The Malagasy Lan-
guage) .

10. H . 3aBa,n;oBCKHii. ApaScKHe nua-
jieKTbi Marpn6a.

(Y.N.Zawadowski. The Maghreb
Arabic Dialects) .

B.B.HBaHOB. XeTTCKHH H3bIK.

(V.V. Ivanov. The Hittite Lan-
guage) .

T.E.KaTeHHHa. H3Hk MapaTxn.

(T.Y. Katenina. The Marathi Lan-
guage) .

MayH MayH HtyH, H.A.OpnoBa,

E.B.IIy3HUKHH, H.M.TaryHOBa.
EHpMaHCKHH H3bIK .

(Maun Maun Nyun, I. A. Orlova,

E.V.Puzitsky, I .M. Tagunova.

The Burmese Language) .

B.M.HacBnoB. KpeBHeyHrypcKHii

H3bIK .

1964

T.B.BeHTitejib. IlbiraHCKHH H3biK.

(T. V.Ventzel. The Gypsy Langua-
ge) .

B . B . BbixyxoneB . CHHrajibCKHH
H3blK .

(V.V. Vykhukholev. The Sinhala
Language) .

A.H.EjiaHCKaa. KonTCKHH H3biK.

(A.I.Yelanskaya. The Coptic Lan-
guage) .

E.M.KapnyiiiKHH. H3uk ophh .

(B.M. Karpushkin. The Oriya Lan-
guage) .

A. A.JIunHH. AKKaflCKHfi hsmk.

(A. A. Lipin. The Akkadian Langua-
ge) .

1965

M.C.AHHPOHOB. UpaBHflHHCKHe H3bl-
KH.

(M.S .Andronov. Dravidian Lan-
guages) .

(Z .M.Dymshitz . The Urdu Language).
C . H . COKOJIOB . ABeCTHHCKHH S3bIK .

(S .N. Sokolov. The Avestan Lan-
guage) .

(V.M.Nasilov. The Old Uigur
Language) .

H.M.OpaHCKHii. HpaHCKHe »3biKH.

(I. M. Oransky. Iranian Langua-
ges) .

E. K.rtamKOB . MaHbvxcypcKHH H3biK.

(B.K.Pashkov. The Manchu Lan-
guage) .

S.P.TeHHuieB. CanapcKHH H3biK.

(E .R.Tenishev . The Salar Lan-
guage) .

A. C.TecejiKHH. flpeBHeHBaHCKHfi

H3bIK .

(A.S . Tesyolkin. The Old Java-
nese Language) .

H.lll.lIlHljMaH . <l)HHHKHHCKHfi H3bIK .

(I.Sh.Shifman. The Phoenician
Language) .

B. K.HxoBJieBa. fl3bix ftopySa.

(V.K. Yakovleva. The Yoruba Lan-
guage) .

F. A.MeJIHKHBIBHJlH. YpapTCKHH
H3bIK .

(G.A.Melikishvili. The Urar-
taean Language).
r.fl.CaHaceeB. CTaponHCbMeHHbiH

MOHrOJIBCKHH H3bIK .

(G.D . Sanzheyev. The Ancient Li-
terary Mongolian Language).
B .II.ToxapcKaa . H3mk MajiHHxe

(MaHflHHTo) .

[v.P.Tokarskaya. The Malinke
(Mandingo) Language] .
K.r.IlepeTexiH. CoBpeMeHHbift ac-
CHpniiCKHft H3blK.

(K.G. Tsereteli. The Modern As-
syrian Language) .

B.fl.ApaKHH. MHHOHe3HftCKHe B3bl-
KH.

(V.D. Arakin. Indonesian Langua-
ges) .

1-4 287

7

Jl.r.repijeH6epr. XoTano-caKCKHH
H3tIK.

(L.G.Gertsenberg. The Khotan-
Saka Language) .

H.M.flbHKOHOB. CeMHTOXaMHTCKHe
H3bIKH.

(I .M.Diakonof f . Semito-Hamitic
Languages) .

T.H.EjiH3apeHK0Ba, B.H.TonopoB.

H3biK nann.

(T.Y.Elizarenkova, V.N.Toporov.

The Pali Language) .

B.A.EiJihmob . fl3biK aiJ)raHCKHx xa-
3apa.

(V.N. Yefimov. The Language of
the Afghan Khazara) .

H.H.KopoJieB. H3WK HenanH.

(N. I. Korolyov. The Nepali Lan-
guage) .

A. n.naBJieHKO. CyHflaHCKHH h 3 biK .

1966

T.M.Baysp. B3biK loxHoapaBuftCKOH
nHCBMeHHOCTH .

(G.M. Bauer. The Language of

the South-Arabian Writings) .

E.M.EbIKOBa. BeHraJIbCKHfl H3bIK.

(E.M. Bykova. The Bengali Lan-
guage) .

P.n.EropoBa. Chh«xh.

(R.P.Yegorova. The Sindhi Lan-
guage) .

M.Kpyc, Jl.H.DlKap6aH. TaraJibcxirit
H3bIK.

1967

10.H.3aBaflOBCKHH. BepbepCKHit H3biK.

(Y.N.Zawadowski. The Berber Lan-
guage) .

B. Kpyna. H3biK Maopn.

1968

( A. P. Pavlenko. The Sundanese
Language) .

Jl.B.CaBejibeBa. H3mk ryflxcapa-

TH.

(L.V. Savelyeva. The Gujarati
Language) .

CT.CerepT. YrapHTCKHii H3biK.
(St.Segert. The Ugaritic Lan-
guage) .

fl.H. BfleJibMaH. flapflCKHe h3mkh.
(D.I.Edelman. The Dardic Lan-
guages) .

KJaHb H3H-xya . fluanexTbi KHTaii-
ckoto H3bnca.

(Yuan Chia-hua. The Dialects
of Chinese) .

C.E .flxOHTOB . flpeBHeKHTafiCKHH

H3blK .

(S.Y.Yakhontov. The Ancient
Chinese Language) .

(M.Krus, L.I.Shkarban. The Ta-
galog Language) .
B.C.PacTopryeBa. CpeflHenepcnn-

CKHH H3bIK .

(V.S.Rastorguyeva. The Middle
Persian Language).
3.P.TeHnmeB, E.X.TonaeBa.

H3hk wejiTbix yftrypoB.
(E.R.Tenishev, B.Kh.Todayeva.
The Language of the Yellow
Uigurs) .

(V.Krupa. The Maori Language).
B . II . CTapHHHH . 3(J>HOnCKIt8 H3bIK.

(V.P.Starinin. The Ethiopian
Language) .

C . X. KHMHJieB . MapOKKaHCKHH AHa-
jieKT apa6cKoro H3biKa.

(S.Kh.Kyamilev. The Moroccan
Dialect of Arabic).

1969

H.M.flyHaeBCKaa. B3mk xeTTCKHX
Hepornn<i>OB .

(I.M.Dunayevskaya. The Hiero-
glyphic Hittite Langua-
ge) .

E.B.ny3HAKHH. KaVHHCKHH H3bIK
(H3biK vacHHrnxo) .

[y. V.Puzitsky . The Kachin
(Chingpho) Language] .

C.A.Mhpohob. H3biK a&puKaaHc.
(S. A. Mironov. Afrikaans).
T.H.HaxajMHa. HaMHpcKne B3biKH.
(T.N.Pakhalina. The Pamir Lan-
guages) .

8

1970

r.A.KnHMOB, fl.H.3nejii>MaH.

H3blK BypymaCKH.

(G. A. Klimov, D.I.Edelman. The
Burushaski Language) .

K).M.IIap4)HOHOBHH. TnSeTCKHH
nncbMeHHbiH h3mk .

1971

M.C.Ahapohob. H3bnc 6payn.

(M.S. Andronov. The Brahui Lan-
guage) .

E.A.3axapi>nH, fl.H.3flejn=.MaH.
fl3bIK KaiUMHpH.

(B. A. Zakharyin, D.I.Edelman.

197?

Jl.H.MopeB, A. A.MoCKaneB ,

ffl.a.rtnaM. JlaoccKHii H3mk.

(L.N.Morev, A. A.Moskalyov,

Y.Y.Plam. The Lao Language).

1973

B.fl.ApaKHH. CaMOaHCKHfl H3bIK.

(V.D. Arakin. The Samoa Langua-
ge) .

M. B . KpiOKOB . H3bIK HHbCKHX Hafl-
nHceft.

1974

Jl.X.BHJIbCKep. CaMapHTHHCKHH
H3bIK .

(L.Kh.Vilsker. The Samaritan
Language) .

A. A.JIeoHTbeB. IlanyaccKHe s3Hkh.

(A. A. Leontyev. The Papuan Lan-
guages) .

1975

B. Kpyna. nonnHe3HHCKHe bsmkh.

(V.Krupa. The Polynesian Lan-
guages) .

lO.X.CHpK. ByrHfiCKHH H3bIK.

1977

B.B.Jle6efleB. IIo3hhhh cpegHe-

apadCKHH H3blK (XIII— XVUIbb.)

1978

B.B.BepTorpaflOBa. IlpaKpHTbi.

(V.V. Vertogradova. Prakrits).

Jl.H.MopeB. 33MK Jibi.

(L.N.Morev. The Lu Langua-
ge) .

(Y.M.Parfionovich. The Written
Tibetan Language) .

K). A. Cmhphob . H3biK neHflH.

(Y. A. Smirnov. The Lahndi Lan-
guage) .

The Kashmiri Language) .

E . E. Thtob . CoBpeMeHHbM aMxap-

CKHH H3bIK.

(E.G. Titov. The Modern Amha-
ric Language) .

H.A.CbipoMBTHHKOB. UpeBHeanoH-
CKHH H3bIK .

(N.A.Syromiatnikov. The Ancient
Japanese Language).

(M.V. Kryukov. The Language of
Yin Inscriptions) .

H.H.TonopoBa. H 3mk nimrana.

(I.N.Toporova. The Lingala Lan-
guage) .

B.M.HacHJioB. H3biK tk>pkckhx na-
mbthhkob yftrypcKoro nucb-
Ma XI— XV bb.

(V.M.Nasilov. The Language of
Turkic Documents in the
Uigur Script of the 11th—
15th Centuries).

(Y.Kh.Sirk. The Buginese Lan-
guage) -.

B . C . OnxMaH . H3hk nr6o.

(B.S .Fikhman. The Igbo Language).

(V.V. Lebedev. Middle Arabic in
the 13th— 18th Centuries).

A. A.MoCKaneB . H3biK nyaHbCKHX
BO (fl3bIK Hy) .

[A. A.Moskalyov. The Language
of the Tuan Yao (the Nu
Language)] .

9

1979

B.r.fy3eB. OapoocMaHCKHii
H3blK .

(V.G.Guzev. The Old Osman
Language) .

E.3.fly6HOBa. H3biK pyaHfla.

(Ye.Z.Dubnova. The Rwanda Lan-
guage) .

K).H.3aBaflOBCKHH. TyHHCCKHH

flnajieKT apaOcKoro H3biica.

1980

K). H . liaBaROBCKHH, H.C.KauHejibcoH.
MepOHTCKHH H3bIK.

1981

B.fl.ApaKHH. TaHTHHCKHH H3blK.

(V.D. Arakin. The Tahitian Lan-
guage) .

M. B .flbflqKOB . Jl3bIK Kpno.

(M.V.Dyachkov. The Krio Lan-
guage) .

M.B .flbHUKOB , A.H.JleOHTbeB ,
E.H.TopcyeBa. 33hk tok-
nncHH (HeoMenaHe3HftcKHH) .

[M.V.Dyachkov, A. N. Leontyev,

Y.I.Torsuyeva. The Tok-Pisin
(Neo-Melanesian) Language] .

1982

O.H.MmiiKypoB. Ajdkhpckhh nnaneKT
apahCKoro H3biKa.

1983

Jl.H.MopeB. UlaHCKHfi a 3biK ■

(L.N.Morev. The Shan Language).

H.A.CbipOMHTHHKOB. KjiaCCHqeCKHfl

1985

JI.H.KuceneBa. 33biK napn AjiraHH-
CTaHa.

(L.N. Kiselyova. The Dari Langu-
age in Afghanistan) .

3.A.10cynoBa. CyneHMaaHHCKHft hh-

1986

10.H.3aBaAOBCKHH, E.B.CMarHHa.
HySHHCKHH H3bIK.

(Yu. N.Zavadovsky , Ye. B.Smag-
hina. The Nubic Language).

(.Y.N.Zawadowski. The Tunisian
Arabic Dialect) .

B.Kpyna. raBaHCKHft H3biK.
(V.Krupa. The Hawaiian
Language) .

K. P.lIepeTejiH. Chphhckhh H3biK.
(K.G. Tsereteli. The Syrian
Language) .

(Yu.N.Zawadowski, I.S.Katsnel-
son. The Meroitic Language).

I0.H.3aBaAOBCKHH. MaBpHTaHCKHii
HnaneKT apa6cKoro H3biica
(xacaHHa) .

',Yu.N.Zawadowski . The Mauri-
tanian Arabic Dialect
(Has saniya) ] .

M.H.HcaeB. 33biK acnepaHTO.

(M. I. Isayev. The Esperanto
Language) .

JI. A.HHKH()>OpOBa. H3bIK BOJIOlJ). ,

(L. A. Nikiforova. The Wolof Lan-
guage) .

(E.N.Mishkurov. The Algerian
Arabic Dialect) .

HnOHCKHii H3bIK.

(N.A.Syromyatnikov. The Classic
Japanese Language) .

aneKT KypflCKoro H3biKa.

(Z .A.Usupova. The Soleimanic
Dialect of the Kurchish
Language) .

A.H.KoBanb, r.B.3y6KO. H3bw
<J>yna .

(The Fula Language) .

IQ

1987

A. H.AjieKcaxHH. flnajieKT xaKKa

(iCHTaHCKHH «3bIK) .

(A.N.Aleksakhin. The Halkka Dia-
lect of the Chinese Language) .

B. <t.Bi>IflpHH. fl3bIK JIOOMa.

(V.F.Vydrin. The Loma Language).
M.B.flbHnKOB. KpeOJlbCKHH H3bIK.
(M.V.Dyachkov. The Creol Lan-
guage) .

T.H.BejiHsapeHKOBa. BeflHHCKHft

«3blK .

(T.Ya.Velizarenkova. The Vedic
Language) .

X.M.3ap6anHeB. H3biK MHHaHricaSay.

(Kh.M.Zarbaliyev. The Minangka-
bau Language) .

C.E.flHKHBep. ryaHH3KoycKHH (xaH-
TOHCKHh) flHajieKT KHTaHCKO-
TO H3bIKa.

(S.B.Yankiver. The Guangzou
/Canton/ Dialect of the
Chinese Language) .

Essays published in English

1965

M. S . Andronov .

The Tamil Lan-

I .M.Diakonoff . Semito-Hamitic

guage.

1966

Languages .

Y.A.Gorgoniyev. The Khmer Lan-

guage .

1967

V.V. Ivanov, V.

■N.Toporov.

S.N. Sokolov. The Avestan Lan-

Sanskrit.

1968

guage.

Viktor Krupa.

The Maori Lan-

guage.

1969

M. S .Andronov.

The Kannada

Language.

1970

M. S .Andronov.

Dravidian Lan-

guage s.

1971

E.Nadzhip. Modern Uigur. R.P.Yegorova. The Sindhi Lan-

Y. A.Rubixjchik. The Modern Per- guage.

si an Language.

A. A. Lipin. The Akkadian Lan-
guage.

1973

G.D . Sanzheyev. The Modern Mon-
golian Language.

1975

Y. A. Smirnov. The Lahndi Lan-
guage .

1 1

1976

T.Y.Elizarenkova, V.N.Toporov. E.G. Titov. The Modern Amharic

The Pali Language. Language.

1978

G.K.Tsereteli. The Modern As- Y.N.Zawadowski. The Maghreb

Syrian Language. Arabic Dialects.

1979

L. N.Morev, A.A.Moskalyov,

Y.Y.Plam. The Lao Language.

1980

M. S. Andronov. The Brahui Lan- M.V. Kryukov. The Language of

guage. Yin Inscriptions.

1981

E.M. Bykova. The Bengali Lan- N.A.Syromiatnikov. The Ancient

guage. Japanese Language.

1982

Y.M.Parfionovich. The Written M.S.Andronov. The Kannada Lan-

Tibetan Language. guage (second edition).

1983

T.V.Ventzel. The Gypsy Langua- D.I.Edelman. The Dardic and Nu-

ge. ristani Languages.

1984

Ye.Z.Dubnova. The Rwanda Lan-
guage .

Please address your comments and suggestions to Editorial Board
of "Languages of Asia and Africa", Central Department of Oriental
Literature, Nauka Publishers, 21, Tsvetnoi Bulvar, Moscow, 103051,
USSR.

CONTENTS

Editors’ Note 5

Introduction 14

Chapter 1 . Phonology 34

Chapter 2. Root and Word Structure 42

Chapter 3. The Nominal Categories in Common Afrasian 57

Gender and nominal classes 57

Case 59

Status 61

Number 63

'Broken' plural 65

Mimation (nunation) and the article 66

Numerals 67

Prepositions and postpositions 68

Chapter 4. Pronouns 70

Personal pronouns 70

Personal markers in the verb 80

The nota genitivi 82

Deictic and other pronouns 83

Chapter 5 . The Verb 85

Chaptet 6. Some Data on the Syntax 111

Word order 111

Varieties of attributive phrases 112

Subordination 113

Appendices 115

Bibliography 135

INTRODUCTION

0.1. The notion of a distinct linguistic entity desi-
gnated as 'Hamitic', which was thought to include cer-
tain languages of North Africa and to stand in some con-
nection with the Semitic languages, originated probably
with R.Lepsius (1810—1884); this notion became firmly
established after the outstanding investigations of
L.Reinisch (1832—1919) [Reinisch 1909]. The term 'Semi-
to-Hamitic' that has been in use up till a short time
ago, was derived from the Biblical 'Genealogy of Nations'
(Gen. 10), where they all are traced back to the three
sons of Noah — Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Soon the kinship
of Egyptian with the Old Semitic languages became obvious;
this problem was treated in detail by A.Erman (1854—1937).
C.Meinhof (1857—1944) over-extended the notion of 'Hami-
tic languages' subsuming all those African languages
which distinguish gender. Quite a lot of work has been
done later on lexical comparison of the Semitic langua-
ges and/or Egyptian with several African languages. How-
ever, from the point of view of method this research
was rather a failure, since, on the one hand, ancient
languages were being compared directly with individual
living idioms, and, on the other, no attempt was made to
find regular reflexes on the level of proto-languages
(of the different linguistic branches and families) . Ne-
vertheless, quite a few reliable correspondences have
been established, especially between Semitic and Egyp-
tian; a somewhat lesser number, between Egyptian and Ber-
ber. One can mention, in this context, the works of A.Em-
ber, R.Calice, E.Zyhlarz, W.Vycichl, W.Leslau. Soon af-
ter World War II M. Cohen (1884—1974) [M. Cohen 1947] pu-
blished the first essay of a comparative vocabulary of
the 'Semito-Hamitic' languages. This work represented a
notable progress in the study of the problem. But it was
justly criticized for lack of precision in using compar-
ative data, as well as for various other shortcomings.
The reviewers (e.g. [Friedrich 1952]) pointed out that
according to the facts represented in Cohen's vocabula-
ry, the 'Hamitic languages' have no separate identity.

As a result, there appeared a school of thought repre-

14

sented by some Egyptologists and by O.Rossler, a Semito-
logist, which attempted to separate completely the lan-
guages of the 'black' Cushites and Chadians from the Se-
mitic language family to which they also assigned (mis-
takenly) Egyptian, as well as the Berbero-Libyan langua-
ges / (O.Rossler) .

By the middle of this century it has finally been
established that the African members of this linguistic
family do not constitute a special 'Hamitic' branch con-
trasting to the Asian 'Semitic' branch. The former must
be classified as a number of independent groups of a
single linguistic family (or superfamily) in which each
individual African group (branch) is at least equal in
taxonomic rank with the Semitic branch1. Thus it became
impossible to use the old term 'Semito-Hamitic' (or 'Ha-
mito-Semitic') since there was no 'Hamitic' entity con-
trasted as a whole to 'Semitic', and it never had exis-
ted. But, conforming to old habits, this term was still
in use in the early 1970s among a section of scholars,
although J. Greenberg had already in the 1950s proposed
in his classification of African languages [Greenberg
1955], to change it. At present the term can be conside-
red obsolete. Side by side with the modern term 'Afra-
sian languages' which is now usual in the Soviet Union,
they are also called 'Afro-Asiatic languages' (after
J. Greenberg, mainly in the USA). In addition, there are
some less happy designations, as 'Erythraean' or 'Lisra-
mic' languages.

The first historical and comparative grammar of the
Afrasian languages was published in the 1960s [Diako-
noff 1965 Russ., 1967 Engl.]. They were still called 'Se-
mito-Hamitic' at that time (cf. also [Diakonoff 1967
Russ .]). Since then historical and comparative studies of
the Afrasian languages have steadily gained ground. At
the moment work is being done on a Comparative Historical Voc-
abulary of Afrasian. [SISAYa 1981; 1 982 ; 1986].-

0.2. Afrasian languages are scattered from Central
Asia to the Atlantic Ocean (dialects of Arabic) , from
Tanzania (South Cushitic) to Senegal and Morocco (Berber
languages) , and from Nigeria (Chadic) to the island of
Malta in the Mediterranean (Maltese) . According to the'
most widely accepted modern classification, this linguis-
tic family falls into six branches: 1) Semitic; 2) Berbe-
ro-Libyan (or Libyan-Guanche) ; 3) Cushitic; 4) Omotic;

5) Egyptian (which died out about the 17th c. A.D.):

6) Chadic.

The degree of kinship among the branches, however, is
more remote than among the branches of the Indo-European
family, e.g. between Indo-Iranian, Slavonic and Germanic.
One may, for instance, consider the Chadic branch to be
on the level of a family which is subdivided into three
branches: Western, Central, and Eastern; these are also
distant enough from each other, so they may, perhaps.

15

themselves rank as 'families', making Chadic a 'superfa-
mily' .

The affiliation of Hausa, as well as of other Chadic
languages, with Afrasian was guessed at already in the
beginning of this century (C.Meinhofj , but it can be con-
sidered as a firmly established fact only since the ‘fif-
ties: very few scholars still persist in denying this
relationship .

A case can be made for considering the Cushitic. group
as, at least, a family, too, made up of three or four
branches: 1) Bedawye, 2) Eastern and Southern Cushitic,

3) the Agaw languages. But a specially close relation-
ship between Eastern and Southern Cushitic is not self-
evident. Southern Cushitic displays some similarities,
mostly, with East Cushitic Somali, but these belong main-
ly to grammatical isoglosses which might represent an
areal feature, i.e., their material proximity is disput-
able. In the lexical sphere its close connection with
Eastern Cushitic is not obvious. The group of Sidamo lan-
guages (the languages of the Rift Valley) can be related
either with the second or with the third branch [Hetzron
1973—74]. The distance between these 'branches' is con-
siderable, so that Cushitic may itself be regarded as a
'superfamily' consisting of three or more linguistic 'fa-
milies ' .

Accordingly, the Afrasian languages may be viewed ei-
ther as a 'superfamily' or as a 'phylum'. This is due to
the much earlier date of the break-up of the Afrasian
proto-language, as compared with the Proto-Indo-European,
and to differences in the time which has passed since
the different individual branches or families, each in
their turn, broke away from Proto-Afrasian. But the fam-
ilies constituting the Afrasian 'superfamily', or 'phy-
lum' , cannot be studied, from the point of view of com-
parative linguistics, in isolation from each other. There
are Cushitic languages, such as Bedawye, which show
specific similarities to Berber, there are Chadic langua-
ges which, possibly, may have connections with Berber,
Omotic and Egyptian, etc. Moreover, all the Cushitic lan-
guages share a great many common lexical items that result
not from genetic kinship but from an extremely long
sojourn on contiguous territories.

Comparing individual branches in a family (or indivi-
dual families in a superfamily, or superfamilies in a
phylum) it is possible to determine the relative chrono-
logy of the emergence of linguistic phenomena in each or
any of these groups by establishing whether such pheno-
mena are characteristic only of a single branch (family),
or can be evidenced in several.

Since the taxonomic ranks of the different language
groups are still to be established, we shall further re-
gard Afrasian conventionally as a 'family', divided into
six ' branches ' .

16

0.3. To avoid unjustifiable comparisons of data deriv-
ing from languages removed in various degrees from the
common protolanguage, it is advisable — following the
example of Indo-Iranian linguistics - to introduce the
notion of Afrasian languages of the Ancient, Middle, and
Modern or Late Stages. It is quite obvious that such a
subdivision is only a rule-of-thumb approximation. We
shall assign to the Ancient Stage those languages which
retain obviously archaic phonological and morphological
systems, e.g., those of them which are closest in that
respect to the languages attested in the oldest written
sources and to even earlier structures which can be re-
constructed by the comparative method. Languages that
possess a phonological system markedly reduced as compar-
ed with the oldest attested or reliably reconstructed
ones, and which have partially lost their old external
inflexion, will be assigned by us to the Middle Stage.

At the same time we must keep in mind the fact that
external inflexion can appear as a secondary phenomenon,
e.g., in the verb it can originate in the morphologiza-
tion of auxiliary verbs, and in the noun, as a result of
postpositions losing their independent status. Finally,
those languages which have thoroughly re-structured their
phonological and morphological systems, we shall assign
to the Late Stage.

0. 4. According to our contemporary level of knowledge,
we can present a conventional classification of indivi-
dual branches of the Afrasian family of languages in the
following way (marked with spacing are names of those
languages which are cited in some detail in the subse-
quent chapters) .

1. The Semitic branch:

(a) Northern-Peripheral (or Eastern, North-Eastern)
subbranch: the extinct Akkadian language of the
Ancient Stage, with dialects: Babylonian and Assyrian
(Late Babylonian belongs to the Middle Stage) ;

(b) Northern-Central (North-Western) subbranch:

Ancient Stage languages— probably , Eblaite (the city
of Ebla, Northern Syria, 3rd millennium B.C.); undoubt-
edly, Canaanite, Amorite, Ugaritic (2nd millennium
B.C.); Middle Stage— H e b r e w, Phoenician-Punic , and
some others; a group of Aramaic dialects; living lan-
guages of the Late Stage: Modern Hebrew, Neo-Aramaic lan-
guages (Mandaic, practically extinct except for reli-
gious usage. Modern Assyrian, Tur5y5, and Ma'lula);

(c) Southern-Central (South-Western) subbranch: Old
Arabic belongs to the_Ancient Stage; this includes
the language of the Qur’an and the medieval literature
and also, with some reserve, Modern Arabic lite-
rary. language2; the living Arabic dialects from
Central Asia to the Sudan and Senegal, as well as Maltese,
can be regarded as languages of the Late Stage or as
intermediate between the Middle and the Late Stages;

2 287

17

(d) Southern-Peripheral (Southern) subbranch: South
Arabian languages of the Ancient Stage-S abaean, M i-
naean, Qatabanian, Hadramautian (1 st millennium
B.C.) in Yemen and Hadramaut, and the living languages
of the Late Stage — M a h r i , HarsusI , Jibball, or
Sliauri (Sahri) , Batharl and So qo tr I (in the People’s
Democratic Republic of Yemen and on the island of So-
qotra) 3 ;

(e) Ethio-Semitic subbranch clearly falls further
into :

(e1) Northern, with the extinct language of the
Middle Stage Go ' az, or Old Ethiopian (it survives in
Ethiopia as the language of the church) , and the living
languages Tigrai (Tigrina) and Tigre (in Eritrea and
other northern regions of Ethiopia) , and

(e") Southern, in turn subdivided into a 'transvers-
al’ group, represented by Amharic, the official
language of modern Ethiopia, Argobba, and languages that
are conventionally called 'Eastern' Gurage4, as well as
Hararl; and a 'peripheral' group which includes Northern
and Western Gurage and the recently extinct Gafat.

Some scholars prefer to combine groups (b) , (c) , and
(d) and call them a 'Western' group, some subsume (c) ,

(d) and (e) as a 'Southern' group, and others even oppo-
se (b) , (c) , (d) and (e) as a whole , constituting a 'West-
stern' group contrasted to the 'Eastern' Akkadian (a).
Formerly, we combined together groups (d) and (e) which,
as it appears, was a mistake [Diakonoff 1967 Engl.].

2. The Cushitic branch.

All known languages are living ones; they, for the
most part, belong to the Late Stage. The composition of
the branch is still the object of scholarly discussions.

(a) The Northern-Cushitic subbranch includes the dia-
lects of the Be da wye (Beja) language. It is spoken
by a mostly nomadic population in the east of the Re-
public of Sudan and the contiguous regions of Egypt and
Ethiopia. Lexical isoglosses connecting it with the
Eastern Cushitic languages Saho-'Afar, abound (possibly
as a result of living for many thousand years in close
neighbourhood) , but both grammatically and phonologic-
ally Eedawye stands isolated, resembling rather the Ber-
bero-Libyan languages. Some authors do not consider
Bedawye to be a Cushitic language [Hetzron 1980].

(b) Eastern-Cushitic subbranch, which includes the
main group of the Cushitic languages, is subdivided into:
(1) 'Lowland', or Eastern Cushitic proper: dialects of

S aho in Ethiopia (Eritrea) and the very closely rela-
ted dialects of the 'Afar language (Danakil, in Erit-
rea and Djibouti), the languages Rendille, Somali
with its dialects and the related languages of certain
small ethnic groups (Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya) ; also
Bayso, Werize, Oromo (Galla) with its dialects and
related languages of small ethnic groups (Ethiopia, Ke-

18

nya) , (2) 'Southern': Dahalo (Kenya) 1,a, Iraqw, A 1 a-
gwa and the Asa— Ngomvia (or Kwadza) group (in Tanza-
nia), and (3) 'Highland', or 'Rift Valley languages' that
are usually considered together with the languages and
dialects of the Sidamo group5: Arbore, Konso— Gidole (?) ,
Geleba, Sidamo, Burjji, Hadiya, Kambatta, and
others. Some authors consider either the Southern or the
Highland and Sidamo languages as a separate subgroup dif-
ferent from the Eastern one;

(c) Central, or Agaw subbranch: B i 1 i n, Khamta, Kha-
mir, Aungi (Awiya) , and other languages, scattered in
enclaves throughout Northern and Central Ethiopia. Here
also belongs the now extinct Kwara which had been spoken
until recently by an ethnic group of the Judaic persua-
sion - the Falashas. Ga'az has a number of loanwords
from an older Agaw language (Proto-Agaw?) .

3. The Omotic branch.

It was originally believed to be a subbranch of Cush-
itic. All the attested languages are living ones and
belong to the Late Stage. Some of them have lost almost
all inflexion worth mentioning and may be considered as
belonging to the analytical type. The Omotic branch in-
cludes Ometo (with numerous dialects), Kaff a (Ka-
fico) and Moca, Yamma, Gimirra, Aro , etc. (all in
Western Ethiopia) .

4. The Libyan-Guanche languages.

These fall into two subbranches: the extinct Guanche
and the Berbero-Libyan , or simply Libyan.. Though some
experts are sceptical as to the linguistic affiliation
of the Guanche languages, the latter are obviously very
close to Berbero-Libyan both in grammar and vocabulary,
as far as the scanty surviving European, mostly Spanish
records make it possible for us to judge. But numerous
isoglosses connecting Guanche with Chadic and other
Afrasian languages to the exclusion of Berbero-Libyan,
indicate a divergent development; there are also some
isoglosses with the (4c) group, which may point to an
additional, rather late influx of southern Berbers to
the Canary islands.

(4a) the Guanche subbranch comprised several appre-
ciably differing languages spoken by the aborigines of
the Canary Islands who gradually adopted Spanish between
the 15th and 17th centuries;

(4b) the Berber (Berbero-Libyan, Libyan) languages;
all (except for the extinct ones) are considered by the
French school to be dialects and subdialects of a single
Berber language. But there is enough divergence even in
basic lexical items between individual 'dialects'. There-
fore other scholars are justified in qualifying them as
different languages or dialect clusters of a separate
branch in the Afrasian family. These languages can be
divided into the following groups:

2-2 287

19

(a) Northern, whichvcan further be subdivided into

dialect clusters: (1) Silh (T as s 1 hi t) , (2) Tamazight

(in Morocco), (3) Zenet (the major dialects being Rif in
Morocco, Zouaoua, or Kabyle, Chaouia and others in Al-
geria, and Serba in Tunisia) ;

(b) Eastern (Ghadames , Auj i la, Siwah, etc. , in
Libya and Egypt) ;

(c) Tuareg (Tamahek and Tamasek) in the Sahara and
Sahel (Algeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso) : Ahaggar,
Taulemmet, Taneslamt, Ghat, etc.: possibly, this group
should further be subdivided into two or three subgroups;

(d) the Zenaga group of languages or dialects (in
Mauritania and possibly in Senegal) .

The Berber languages and dialects listed above belong
to. the Late Stage in the development of the Afrasian lan-
guages .

The Old Libyan (or Eastern-Numidian) language of
the Middle Stage is attested by inscriptions' (since the
2nd century B.C., in Tunisia and Algeria). Another an-
cient language of the aboriginal population of North Af-
rica, Old Mauritanian, has left some still undeciphered
inscriptions; it, too, probably belonged here. Data at
hand are insufficient for assigning Old Libyan to a de-
finite (sub) group; one is inclined to include it into
group (a) .

In terms of grammatical structure the Berber langua-
ges are close to Semitic and Bedawye . At the same time,
numerous lexical isoglosses connect them with Chadic and
Egyptian.

5. The Egyptian branch.

It is represented by only one language: Egyptian
at the various stages of its evolution, beginning with
Old Egyptian of the 3rd millennium B.C. which apparently
belonged to the Ancient Stage. Its latest phase (2nd c.
B.C. — 17th c. A.D.) is called Coptic and belongs to the
Late Stage. In terms of grammatical structure Egyptian
is rather isolated (possibly closer to Chadic) , but it
shares many morphological and lexical isoglosses with
Semitic, Chadic and Berber. The apparent proximity of
Old Egyptian to Old Semitic is due to the similarity of
their diachronic level.

6. The Chadic branch.

It comprises more than 150 living dialects, dialect
clusters and languages. At present it is usually divided
into three subbranches:

(a) Western Chadic: the Ha us a and Gwandara group:
Angas , Sura, etc.; Bolewa, Karekare, Dera, Tangale,
etc . ; Southern B a u c h i ; Northern Bauchi; Bade,

N g i z i m, etc.; the Ron group stands apart: Fyer,Bok-
kos , 3a, etc. ;

(b) Central Chadic: Tera, Sara, Hana, Ga’anda, Margi,
Bura,- etc.; Higi and others; Bata, Gude (Mubi) , etc.;
Hidkala (Lamang) , etc.; Wandala, Glavda, etc.; Sukur,

20

Daba, yina, Musgoy, Matakam, Mofu, Gisiga; the Koto.ko
group: Logone, Buduma, Afade, Gulfei, etc.; Musgum; Gi-
der; the Masa group (sometimes described as a separate
subbranch) ;

y (c) Eastern Chadic: Somrai, Tumak, Sokoro, Dangla,
3egu, 3onkor, Mubi, etc.

The Chadic vocabulary has important connections with
Egyptian and Berber, its grammar seems closer to Egyp-
tian. A number of Chadic languages are characterized by
the retention of various archaisms. All the languages
belong to the Late Stage of the Afrasian linguistic evo-
lution; however. Northern and Southern Bauchi, Ngizim
and a few other languages have retained a very old phon-
ological system, and some languages, as Mubi, have cer-
tain grammatical features of the Middle stage.

Many of the Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic languages are
documented very inadequately, some of them have not been
described at all, and are known only by their names (some
times, even their original names, or autonyms, are not
attested) . As was noted, it is possible that some
of the Afrasian languages are still not accounted for.
Thus, A.Yu.Militarev, like Ch.Armbruster and others be-
fore him, is inclined to think of a 7th, Nubian, branch
of the Afrasian languages, relating to it also the
extinct Meroitic language [Militarev 1984 Mer.] .

0.5. Both the division of the Afrasian languages into
branches and their classification within these branches
cannot yet be considered as final. The above mentioned
six branches did not break away simultaneously from the
initial cluster of very closely related dialects; how-
ever, there is ground to believe that all of them origi-
nate from it. This cluster we shall conventionally call
the Proto-Afrasian language.

The break-up of the Proto-Semitic language took place
apparently some four or five thousand years later
than the disintegration of Proto-Cushitic occurred;8
Consequently, the individual groupings inside the Cushi-
tic branch cannot be, as a matter of fact, recognized
as being on the same level as the divisions within Semi-
tic. This is precisely the reason why the 'Western Cushi
tic languages' have now been classified as a separate
Omotic branch [Fleming 1969; Bender 1975; see, however,
also Zaborski 1980]. There are important arguments
for excluding Bedawye from the Cushitic branch, and also
for giving a place apart (within or outside of Cushitic)
to the Agaw languages [Hetzron 1980]. As for the Eastern
and the Southern Cushitic languages, it still remains
uncertain whether they should be placed (within the Cu-
shitic branch) at the same approximate time-depth level
as Semitic, or whether they should be treated as a more
ancient entity , or regarded as later subbranches compar-
able with the subbranches of Semitic.

2-3 287

21

Quite similar is the position of Chadic vis-a-vis the
Semitic branch. The three groups comprising this branch
seem to have diverged at an early date, being independ-
ent units with their own individual prototypes. However,
these are likely to have developed out of a common Chad-
ic protolanguage younger than Common Afrasian but much
older than Proto-Semitic. In fact, the individual Chadic
languages often stand much more apart from each other
than the Semitic ones. But we must also take into ac-
count, first, the larger purely chronological distance
between the disintegration of Proto-Chadic which later
developed into separate subbranches, and from that level
to present-day dialects. Secondly, we must assess the
degree of the local non-Afrasian linguistic influence
that acted both as a substratum and an adstratum. The
considerable anthropological heterogeneity of the speak-
ers of the various Afrasian languages emphasizes the
probability of very substantial linguistic substrata.7

The Berbero-Libyan 'languages' (dialect clusters) are
roughly as distant from each other as the different sub-
branches of Semitic; sometimes the divergence is even
greater. This fact does not agree with O.RSssler's opi-
nion that they derive from Common Proto-Semitic, al-
though Semitic and Berber are very close to each other in
their morphological structure; however, this is not true
of the vocabulary. Many Berber phonological and morpho-
logical features— to a much lesser degree, lexical ones-
are reminiscent of the Northern Cushitic Bedawye.

The lack of contacts between Chadic and other Afrasian
branches during thousands of years, with the excep-
tion of, probably, Berbero-Libyan, (the impact of Arabic
began only in the last centuries of the 1st millennium
A.D.), and a powerful substratum and adstratum influence
have combined to impart a considerable number of re-
lative divergences in the phonological, morphological
and lexical respects to the Chadic branch. Nevertheless,
phonetic archaisms have been retained, especially in
Western Chadic.

The ancient Egyptian language shares lexical isoglos-
ses with all other Afrasian branches. One may stress the
number of lexical isoglosses connecting the Egyptian
branch exclusively with Chadic, though the contact be-
tween them had been evidently disrupted for a very long
time. It is possible that Egyptian and Chadic may consti-
tute a common ECh subfamily® that contrasts with another,
the SC subfamily, consisting of Semitic and Cushitic.

This may be indicated by the following grammatical
isoglosses dated to the Ancient stage: (1) the prefixal
type of conjugation of the verbs of action, and the suf-
fixal type of conjugation of the stative verbs in Berbero-
Libyan, Semitic and Cushitic9 ; (2) the development
of the verbs of action from attributive and preposition-
al phrases in Egyptian and, most likely, in Chadic (the

22

conjugation of the stative verbs is identical with that
in the first group).10 The problem of the archaic or
innovating character of both isoglosses relating to the
inflexion of the predicative word is very complex, and
demands taking into account many factors that have not
yet been studied.11

And thus, though we call the entity uniting all the
Afrasian languages, a 'family', and this term is used
throughout the book, we certainly do recognize the fact
that the relationship of its members is not so close as,
for example, the interrelationships in the Indo-European
linguistic family.

For reasons of convenience, we subdivide the AA fa-
mily into two superbranches or subfamilies, SC(B) and
ECh(0?) which are further broken down — in a similarly
conventional fashion — into the six branches which have
been discussed above. It should be borne in mind that
some subdivisions of the Cushitic and Chadic branches
should rather be treated as independent branches. In
this case, what we termed branches will rank as families;
superbranches or subfamilies become superfamilies, and
the whole Afrasian family will rank as a 'phylum' .

These problems, hopefully, will be solved in the co-
ming ten or twenty years.

0.6. The common ancestor of all the Afrasian langua-
ges, Proto-Afrasian, undoubtedly represented a closely
related set or cluster of dialects whose distribution
was limited both in space and in time. They were so close
to one another in phonology, morphology and vocabulary
that it is impossible to imagine Proto-Afrasian
emerging simultaneously on both shores of the Red Sea
('the Erythraean hypothesis') s.ince that sea must have
been a formidable barrier in those ancient times.

We have proposed another hypothesis concerning the
origin of Afrasian [Diakonoff 1975], suggesting to place
the Proto-Afrasian language in South-Eastern Sahara (say,
between Tibesti and Darfur) which was still quite inhabi-
table in the greater part of its area during the Mesolith-
ic period. If Egyptian and Chadic never really had a
developed system of prefixal conjugation, we have to re-
cognize the fact that the speakers of Egyptian were the
first to break away from the basic Proto-Afrasian nucle-
us not later than the 8th millennium B.C. At first
they settled in the upper valley of the Great Nile, then
they moved down the Nile valley to Egypt. Roughly at the
same time — a bit earlier, a bit later — the speakers of
Proto-Chadic must have left in the southern direction,
and then have merged with the Negroid substratum. Still
later the speakers of Omotic moved to the South-East. At
the turning point of the Mesolithic and Neolithic pe-
riods (not later than the 7th millennium B.C.) the speak-
ers of Proto-Cushitic dialects - or, possibly, Proto-
Bedawye, Proto-Agaw and Proto-Cushitic? - also migrated

2-4 287

23

to the East. By then the characteristic SC(B) verbal
system had fully developed. Speakers of the northernmost
Cushitic dialects (Bedawye) might still for a long time
have kept up contacts with the Sudano-Saharan nucleus of
the Proto-Afrasian dialects (Semito-Libyan) . As the dia-
lectal split of Proto-Semitic, already in Asia, is firmly
dated within the period from the 5th and the middle of
the 4th millennium B.C. [Rabin 1975; Diakonoff 1975, 1981]
it is reasonable to suppose that the speakers of Proto-
Semitic had separated from Proto-Berbero-Libyan some time
during the Neolithicum (6th - 5th millennium B.C.).
This might have been called forth by the end of the Neo-
lithic climatic optimum and the coming of a more arid
age, as well as by the impoverishment of the Saharan
pastures because of overgrazing practiced by the ancient
pastoral tribes. The tribes speaking the Proto-Semitic
language went north-eastward crossing the Nile valley
(still unfit for settlement) 12 , and, passing onward over
the Suez isthmus, spread throughout the Middle East. At
the same time, the Libyan-Guanche tribes went in the op-
posite direction up to the Atlantic coast and the Cana-
ries; and possibly, over into the Pyrenaean Peninsula.13

The alternative hypothesis advanced by A. Yu.Militarev
suggests that the original locations of the Afrasian lan-
guages were in the Middle East and in the Arabian Penin-
sula.14 Some Cushitic— South Arabian isoglosses that are
not found in the Ethio-Semitic languages have been addu-
ced by him as a supporting evidence. As indirect indica-
tions to the Middle East as a region of subsequent pro-
tracted development of various Afrasian dialects (not
only Semitic) , contact lexical isoglosses are supposed
to exist connecting separate branches of Afrasian, such
as Cushitic, Chadic and Berbero-Libyan , but seemingly
excluding Egyptian, with some non-Afrasian languages of
the same region, viz. North Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestan
and Abkhazo-Adyghian as reconstructed by S.N'ikolayev and
S.Starostin) and Sumerian [Militarev-Starostin 1984; Mi-
litarev 1984 Sum.].

The place where part of the speakers of Afrasian cross-
ed over into Africa (in addition to Sinai) , is supposed
to be the Bab al-Mandab Straits. The conditions now pre-
valent there, such as strong unfavourable currents into
the ocean, could hardly have allowed to cross the strait
using the primitive means of transport available to the
Mesolithic and Early Neolithic man. But there is little
doubt that in the earlier ages the strait was conside-
rably more narrow. The cause of the migration is assumed
to be the same as in the first hypothesis, namely, arid-
ization, in this case — of the Arabian Peninsula during
the 6th - 4th millennia B.C. But this hypothesis seems
to require too late a date for the loss of contact be-
tween ,the individual Afrasian branches; if they had stay-
ed in the same area (Hither Asia and the Arabian penin-

24

sula) until the 4th millennium, the number of contact
isoglosses between them should have been much more con-
siderable than that presented by A.Yu.Militarev. [Mili-
tarev 1984 Afras.].

The adherents of the so-called 'Nostratic' or ’Boreal'
hypothesis assume a 'Nostratic' linguistic community
(which, apparently, must correspond to the language of
the Cro-Magnon man of the Upper Palaeolithic epoch) . To
'Nostratic' are assigned the languages of the Indo-Euro-
pean, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Uralic, Altaic and Afrasian
families [jllic-Svityc 1971], Naturally, the problem
where the early contacts between Afrasian and other
'Nostratic' languages could have taken place must be
solved. Some scholars think this happened via the Middle
East (which might have been the original home of the
Afrasian family) and Asia Minor. Some scholars also be-
lieve that Indo-Europeans originate from this region or
its neighbourhood [Gamkrelidze— Ivanov 1 984]. [1S It is
also possible that during the Wurm glaciation- and the
consequent considerable fall in the level of the Medi-
terranean Sea Europe and North Africa could communicate
across the Tunisian and, possibly, the Gibraltar straits.16

We must stress the fact that lexical study of a proto-
language permits us to make inferences about the level
of the social development and material culture as
well as about the ecology of the habitat of its speak-
ers. Thus, attentive research in the Common Semitic voc-
abulary makes it clear that the speakers of Proto-Semi-
tic, were during the late Neolithicum sheep- and cattle-
breeders but not actual nomads [Fronzaroli 1964—1969;
1975]; in absolute dates this corresponds in the Near
East to the 6th-5th millennia B.C. Further comparison of
Proto-Semitic with the reconstructed Proto-Cushitic lan-
guage (s) shows that the separation of the Cushitic tribes
took place at the level of the Late Mesolithic peri-
od (not later than the 8th millennium B.C.). Thus, the
Proto-Afrasian language has to be assigned to the Meso-
lithic period.

During migration from their original homeland the Proto-
Afrasian tribes merged and mixed with the local popul-
ation which quite often was much more numerous. Event-
ually, tribes of very different racial types began speak-
ing various Afrasian languages. Putting it differently,
after a stage of bilingualism the- wave of language expan-
sion, as it often happens, went ahead of the original ra-
cial groups’ movements. Linguistically, the local sub-
strata and adstrata . intensified the pace of typological
divergence of dialects of the original proto-language,
and favoured radical changes in phonology, syntax, voca-
bulary and, to a lesser degree, in morphology.

0.7. Phonological systems that are closest to that
which must be reconstructed for Proto-Afrasian seem to
be preserved in Omotic, in some Cushitic languages, and

25

in several Chadic languages such as Angas, Bauchi and
Ngizim. Undoubtedly, even more archaic was the phonology
of Proto-Semitic; the phonological structure of Old Arab-
ic is still quite archaic. The Egyptian system under-
went a considerable simplification, but it must be stress-
ed that Proto-Semitic, as it is reconstructed, is much
older - perhaps by a thousand years - than even the ear-
liest ancient Egyptian texts. On the other hand, we can-
not reconstruct the Proto-Egyptian language as it exi-
sted at the age level of Proto-Semitic, since the Egyp-
tian branch consists of one single language, and compa-
rativist methods are not applicable.

The phonology of Common Berbero-Libyan can only be
reconstructed at a comparatively late diachronic level,
and presents a picture of overall simplification, yet
it does confirm the validity of the Proto-Afrasian re-
constructions that are given below.

Rather peculiar is the situation in Chadic — with the
exception of a few very archaic languages. The majority
preserve some features of the old phonological' system:
the consonantal triads, consisting of the voiceless, the
voiced and the emphatic members; a distinctive role of
the consonants J, y, j, n; the presence of lateral con-
sonants, etc. But any such phoneme does not necessarily
preserve the historical identity of the similarly arti-
culated proto-phoneme. E.g., the Chadic emphatics are
often derived from an Afrasian phonetic cluster, for
instance, a laryngeal + a labial, a dental, or some
other voiced or voiceless stop; at the same time the old
Afrasian emphatics sometimes develop quite differently.

Clear traces of a most archaic morphosyntactical
structure, thp ergative, have been preserved in some Cush-
itic languages; there are also some relics in Semitic
(Akkadian) . The South-Central Arabic has rather archaic
phonological and morphological systems. Conservative
morphology is characteristic of the extinct North-Peri-
pheral Semitic Old Akkadian (as distinct from Old Baby-
lonian Akkadian, etc.) and the equally extinct Old Egyp-
tian. The same can be said about the ancient South-Peri-
pheral and Ethio-Semitic languages, some of the Berber
languages, and Bedawye. Particular phonological and mor-
phological archaisms are observed in other Cushitic and
in some Chadic languages.

The substratum influence is most noticeable in Chadic,
Omotic, and, perhaps, in Southern Cushitic; among the Se-
mitic languages - in Akkadian of the Ancient stage (Su-
merian substratum). At the Late Stage, such influence is
prominent in Ethio-Semitic (Cushitic, mainly Agaw, sub-
stratum) and in the western Arabic (Maghreb) dialects
(Berber substratum) .

Roots common to. all the four groups of the Semitic
branch can be counted in hundreds. The total number of
words or roots which can be considered as derived from

26

Proto-Afrasian is not yet exactly known, but it must be
quite considerable.

M. Cohen [Cohen 1947] thought to have identified Up to
a hundred roots common to three or more branches, and
more than 500 that occur in at least two branches of
Afrasian. But it must be stressed that Cohen’s list con-
tains quite a few irregular and doubtful corresponden-
ces, and more sceptically-minded specialists believed
that this number must be reduced by three to four times.
Cohen’s list also has many omissions, since he made no
attempt at a sequential, stage-by-stage reconstruction
of Proto-Berber, Proto-C.ushitic , etc.; he took into ac-
count very little of Chadic. Also, quite unjustifiably,
he compared Late Stage languages of the African branches
directly with the Ancient stage Semitic languages and
Egyptian. Moreover, a lot of facts about the modern
(especially African) Afrasian languages had not been
known and studied by that time. It is evident- that a di-
rect comparison of Ancient and Modern Afrasian langua-
ges - the latter having, naturally, diverged very sub-
stantially from the Common Afrasian prototype — cannot
produce convincing results. The historical and genetic
relationships of individual members of the family have
to be established. In Cohen’s days it was not yet pos-
sible to reliably define the regularity of all sound cor-
respondences between languages within any one branch of
the Afrasian languages, except Semitic. Because of this,
it remained impossible to formulate regular correspon-
dences between the branches.

Only recently much work has been and is being done
to establish the reflexes both within the Cushitic, Ber-
bero-Libyan and Chadic branches, and encompassing the
family as a whole. Provisional counts show that it would
be possible to trace perhaps no less than a thousand re-
liable Afrasian roots common to no, less than two, usual-
ly three or more branches.

Today, the most urgent task of Afrasian linguistics
is to establish regular correspondences. The natural way
would be to establish them, first, between languages of
various obviously closely related groups, and then, be-
tween the reconstructed proto-languages of such groups.

The latter could be assigned to an earlier, say, the
Middle stage. Next we should reconstruct the indivi-
dual proto-languages of each group separately, and, fin-
ally, the proto-language of the whole family. First at-
tempts in this direction [Diakoriof f-Porkhomovsky 1979,
SISAYa 1981, 1982, 1986; Hodge 1985] have brought some
very encouraging results.

0.8. The above exposition makes it clear that the
Afrasian linguistic family includes extinct languages
that were part of great civilizations, living languages
of great modern nations playing important historical
roles, and living languages of ethnic groups with no writ-

27

ten tradition. Here is not the place to deal with their
history, but a short review of their writing systems
would be helpful since they have a direct bearing upon
the evaluation of problems a linguist has to tackle.

0.9. The earliest Afrasian languages known to us -
the Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite, and Egyptian -possess-
ed systems of a mixed logo- and syllabographic type.

The basis of such systems was constituted by 'logograms',
or ideograms, i.e., pictorial or symbolic mnemonical
signs that corresponded to the word reflected by the
picture or symbol in question; at the same time, every
such sign could represent all other words that were some-
how mentally associated with the basic notion. The li-
mit of the range of associated words that could be repre-
sented by such a sign was determined by the points of
contact with another associative range that was connect-
ed with a different sign. Those associations could be
functional, by contiguity, by similarity, and phonetical,
i.e., homonymous words could be, in principle, represent-
ed by the same sign. In real life this could happen on-
ly when homonymous words, because of their abstract cha-
racter, or for other reasons, could not be represented
pictorially and, consequently, could not have a sign of
their own.

The possibility of associations by homonymity made it
also possible to use signs for rebus-like writing, par-
ticularly, to represent morphemes, syntactic words, fo-
reign proper names, etc. Because of this every 'word'-
sign ('logogram', or ideogram) could acquire additional,
phonetic values. Such signs are called syllabic although
this is not entirely correct, since they may denote a
single vowel, half a syllable, or two syllables. At the
same time, because one logographic sign could represent
several words, the same sign used syllabically could
also become 'polyphonic', i.e., it could denote several
entirely different sound-sequences, originally correspond-
ing to different words connected by mental association.
Doubtful cases could be clarified by the use of determin-
atives: the Egyptian writing system uses them with (al-
most) every written word, and this circumstance often
permits the Egyptologists to obtain a more precise mean-
ing of the word. E.g., if it can be inferred from the
context that a given word denotes 'a vessel', the pictor-
ial determinative sketches the actual form of the vessel,
which, in turn, would make clear the function of
the vessel, and so forth. In the Sumero -Akkadian writing
system the determinatives are used optionally and point
to the general category to which a given notion belongs:
professions, gods, countries, birds, fishes, wooden
objects, objects made of metal, leather, stone, etc.

In Mesopotamia the pictorial writing was replaced by
cursive already by the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C.
Writing consisted of drawing lines on a clay tablet with

28

the edge of the cut-off end of a reed-stick; therefore,
in time cursive signs assumed a wedge-like (cuneiform)
character. In Egypt pictorial writing, or hieroglyphics,
remained in use for monumental and display inscriptions
until the end of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Sim-
ultaneously with it there was in use a cursive (hiera-
tic) and later, an even more abbreviated and ligatured
demotic writing.

The logo-syllabographic writing systems had never made
any attempt at an adequate representation of the pho-
nological aspects of speech. For instance, in the Akka-
dian cuneiform script voicelessness, voicedness or the
emphatic character of a- consonant were never distinguish-
ed either in the inlaut or the auslaut. And in other
cases syllabic signs did not always make it possible to
distinguish different phonemes with the same locus of
articulation. Thus, in Old Akkadian no distinction at
all was made between voiced, voiceless and emphatic
sounds; all the affricates were represented by a single
series of syllabograms , etc. In time, more accurate me-
thods of representing phonological and phonetical differ-
ences were gradually introduced, but the stage of a
full and adequate reflection by writing of the entire
phonological system was never reached .. E . g . , there were
special signs for [ba] an<i [pa] hut a single sign repre-
sented both [bu] and [pu] .. The pronunciation of Akkadian
words is usually established with the help of etymology,
i.e. comparing the pronunciation of related words in
other Semitic languages, or comparing the use of differ-
ent signs in the inflexion of the same word. In Egypt,
neither the logographic nor the syllabographic signs
could distinguish vowels, and in this way the sign mn
could be read as man, min, mun, mana, smna, and so on.

0.10. About the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C.
the Western Semites developed a 'quasi-alphabetic' writ-
ing system consisting of 22 to 30 signs where each sign
represented a 'consonant + any or zero vowel'. This sys-
tem much more adequately represented the consonantal
phonemes, although in some cases a single sign could be
used for two (or more?) acoustically similar phonemes,
e.g. , sV for [sV] and [5V]', hV for [hv] and |]hV] , 'V for
['Vj and [yV] [Steiner-Nims 1 984]. Later on this (so cal-
led ’Phoenician') quasi-alphabet was modified in such a
way that, some signs for sonorants became also used for
representing homorganic long vowels and diphthongs (these
are the so-called matres leotionis') : w for [u] , [o] ,
y for LI] , [e] ; 5 , h (originally only in the auslaut)1
for [a] .

0.11. All the later writing systems of the Afrasian
peoples derive, directly or indirectly, from the West
Semitic quasi-alphabet. Below we enumerate Afrasian lan-
guages that possess, or had possessed, a system of wri-
ting, with their characteristics in brief.

29

Semitic languages: Akkadian— the Old Akkadian and
Classical Akkadian cuneiform script; Eblaite — a modific-
ation of the Old Akkadian cuneiform script; Ugaritic — a
quasi-alphabet with cuneiform signs that are not deri-
vatives of Akkadian; special signs for [’a], [_’i] (and
[1*0] 3 i [’u] ; Phoenician — a West Semitic quasi-alphabet
(in late Punic inscriptions —with the use of the matres
leetionis system to denote some of the short vowels) ;
Hebrew -the same quasi-alphabet, later the modern Hebrew
script, a modification of Old Aramaic (v. infra); since
the early Middle Ages supra- and subscript diacritics
for vowels (only in the Biblical texts); Old Aramaic —the
Phoenician quasi-alphabet with slight cursive modifica-
tions; the Syriac and Mandaic dialects developed special
cursive varieties: the Syriac with sporadical supra- and
subscript diacritics for short vowels, the Mandaic ex-
tending the matres leetionis system to short vowels ; Arab-
ic — a further development of the Aramaic cursive script
with the addition of some letters for the phonemes ab-
sent in Aramaic; all long vowels obligatorily expressed
by matres leetionis', for the Qur’an, school texts and si-
milar there are also supra- and subscript diacritics
for short vowels; Maltese — the Roman alphabet; Epigraphic
South Arabian — a variety of the West Semitic quasi-alpha-
bet with additional letters; Ga'az (Old Ethiopian) — South
Arabian script where each sign represents a consonant +
short a, but the form of the characters is slightly mo-
dified when representing a combination of a consonant
(1) with the zero or the neutral vowel, (2) with [i] ,

(3) with [u] , and (4) with long [a]. Tigre, Tigrai and
Amharic — the same script with slight variations.

The majority of Cushitic languages are non-literary ;
some use the Amharic script; Somali, after an experimen-
tion period using an alphabet of its own as well as Ro-
man characters, has adopted the Arabic script.

The Berber languages: Old Libyan (Numidian) had a
script of its own based on the principles of the Phoeni-
cian (or the South Arabian) quasi-alphabet. A derivative
of this system, the Tifinagh script, is still used by
the Tuaregs of Central Sahara. The speakers of Northern
Berber languages sometimes employ a modified Arabic
script but much more often they write in Arabic.

The Egyptian language -v. supra . A modified variety
of the Egyptian system was used for Meroitic. Coptic
(the latest stage of the Egyptian language) adopted the
Greek alphabet adding a few signs taken over from the De-
motic script; the same applies to Old Nubian.

A single Chadic language possesses a writing system,
viz. Hausa: in the 1 6th— 1 9th centuries A.D. it used a va-
riety of the Arabic script, at present it employs Roman
characters.

30

REFERENCES

1 It seems that of all other noted specialists in the field
only W.Vycichl continued, in the 1970s, to set off the Semitic
languages against all the other Afrasian languages as 'Hamitic',
on the basis of a single criterion: the prevalence of triconsonan-
tal roots in Semitic, and of biconsonantal ones in 'Hamitic'. Vy-
cichl does not deny the existence of biconsonantal roots also in
Semitic, while there are tri- and even quadruconsonantal roots in
'Hamitic' but, however, he tries to downgrade the role of the tri-
consonantals in the latter.

2 The Modern Arabic literary language is wholly based on the
Old Arabic of the Ancient stage, but the external inflexion is re-
duced.

3 According to Militarev [Militarev 1984 AfrasJ, the South
Arabian languages of the Late stage and the South Arabian langua-
ges of the Ancient stage belong to different branches.

11 Gurage, or qsetana ('Christians') is a common denomination
of those ethnic groups that speak non-Amharic Semitic- languages ,
mainly south of the Amharic-Argobba area, and who are Chris-
tians. Closely related are the languages of Gafat and of the Moslem
Har arl .

l*a Some authors believe that Dahalo belongs to 'Lowland' Cu-
shitic.

5 All the languages of subgroup (b [3] ) are sometimes called
'Sidama'. This designation is not very happy since earlier it was
applied to still other dialects'.

6 If the latter linguistic entity ever existed at all. It is
possible that Proto-Agaw, Proto-Eastern-Cushitic, Proto-Bedawye ,
etc., derive directly from Proto-Afrasian. This problem has not
been sufficiently studied.

7 Part of the Berbers and (in the past) the Guanche belong(ed)
to a special 'sub-race' within the Europeoid greater race which
had much in common with some anthropological types of Western Eur-
ope; the Guanche have even been compared with the Cro-Magnon man of
the Upper Palaeolithicum of Europe, The rest of the speakers of the
Berbero-Libyan (and, formerly, of the. Egyptian) languages belong
mostly to various types of the 'Mediterranean' sub-race of the Euro-
peoid greater race. The speakers of the Semitic languages belong to
the 'Mediterranean' and 'Assyroid' (or 'Armenoid') sub-races of the
Europeoids. Speakers of Southern Semitic languages belong mostly to
the 'Ethiopian' sub-race, which also apparently should be classed

as Europeoid, although some scholars prefer to class it as a sub-
race of the Negro race. The Cushites belong also to the Ethiopian
sub-race, while the rest of Afrasian speaking tribes and nations be-
long to the 'Negroid' sub-race of the Negro race.

8 Or a ' superfamily ' if one prefers to classify Afrasian as a
'phylum'. Grammatically, Berbero-Libyan languages belong to SC (thus
SCB) , and Omotic may belong to ECh, but this needs serious checking.

9 The prefixal conjugation of the verbs of action is retained
in all Berber languages, in Akkadian, almost in all other Semitic
languages (for the imperfective conjugation), in many verbs of the
Northern Cushitic Bedawye, and is vestigially attested in some
Eastern and Central Cushitic languages.

31

10 The common Afrasian suffixal conjugation of the stative
verbs has survived (1) in the Semitic languages, but the origi-
nal function is attested only in the extinct Akkadian where the
stative predicate (a most important detail!) is both structurally
and functionally no-t really a verbal but rather a nominal form,
which is an extremely archaic feature. The rest of the Semitic lan-
guages use the suffixal conjugation only in the "Perfect" of later
origin; (2) in the Egyptian language; (3) in Kabyle, Au^ila and so-
me others of the Berber branch; (4) In Cushitic the typical finite
verbal form is a compound between a verbal noun and a suffixed auxi-
liary verb with prefixal inflexion, transformed into a suffix no
longer felt as a separate lexeme; but in Sidamo etc. there exists

a so-called 'relative conjugation' which is formed from a verbal
noun plus an auxiliary verb in the suffixal 'stative' conjuga-
tion; (5) in the Chadic branch the suffixal conjugation of the ori-
ginal stative has' apparently survived in Mubi. The place of Omotic
in this classification is not clear since it has lost almost all
external inflexions. It is not improbable, however, that Omotic
has retained relics of a suffixal conjugation, and could belong to
the ECh subfamily (thus EChO?) .

11 The problems of grouping and ordering the branches of Afra-
sian are still far from being clear. In particular, this concerns
the history of their verbal systems. The matter is made even more
complex by the fact that in Chadic only the construction ’attribu-
te—determinatum’ is attested, while in both Egyptian and Semitic
the usual order is 'determinatum— attribute' . Both constructions are
present in Berbero-Libyan. As a consequence, both consistuent parts
of the verb that has its origin in an attributive or prepositional
construction are fixed in Chadic in an inverted order, as compared
with Egyptian. It seems likely that we have to accept the Chadic
variant as the typo logically more ancient, because the formation

of the prefixal conjugation justifies the supposition that the domi-
nant order was still that of attribute— determinatum at the time of
appearance of this type of conjugation in the other groups of the
Afrasian languages, Semitic included. It is, of course, always
possible that in Chadic we deal with a secondary appearance of a
typologically old construction.

12 The Nile valley was partly a sea gulf, partly swamped up to
a point which now lies rather far up the valley. The more probable
route would be via the Wadi Hammamat and what now is called the
Eastern desert to Suez and further to the North-East.

13 The Iberians, the ancient population of the Pyrenaean Pe-
ninsula (not to be confused with the Iberians who lived in Iberia
or Iveria, a part of ancient Georgia in Transcaucasia) are someti-
mes believed to be linguistically related to the Berbero-Libyans ,
but the surviving Iberian texts make this hypothesis very
plausible.

14 A more precise identification was proposed by Militarev and
sustained from the archaeological and historical side by V.Shnirel-
man. In their opinion, the Proto-Afrasian speakers were the Natufi-
ans of the well-known early Neolithic culture of the Palestine-
Syrian area [Militarev-Shnirelman 1984].

32

15 Glottochronological evidence seems at present to point to
a date in the 10th millennium B.C. for Proto-Afrasian before its
break-up. Comparative and historical linguistic data seem to make
it probable that the speakers of that language were able to dig
the soil with sticks in order to sow grain [Militarev forthcoming] .
But archaeological and paleobotanical data seem to imply that the
appearance of agriculturists using the hoe and the sickle for the
regular cultivation of domesticated (not wild) forms of grain in
the foothill regions of the Near East and Asia Minor are not to be
dated earlier than the 9th— 8th millennia B.C. It must also be nor
ted that the African continent, in contrast to the Near East, is
still very insufficiently surveyed from the archaeologic point of
view. All evidence, archaeological and glottochronological, should
be checked, and possible sources of chronological errors eliminat-
ed.

16 This location of the Indo-European Urheimfct is highly impro-
bable [Diakonoff 1982].

17 As was noted, the Kabyles (of the modern Ber-
bers) , the Guanches and the ancient neighbours of the Egyptians —
the Eastern Libyans —have been considered by certain scholars to
have preserved the anthropological type of the Cro-Magnon man much
better than most historically attested peoples. On the other hand,
one must remember that anthropologists often look for the earliest
ancestors of the Cro-Magnon man in the Near East which is the only
place where a transitional Neanderthaloid-Cro-Magnon-like type has
so far been attested.

*

* *

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to V.Ya.Parkhomovsky for much assistance
in writing this book. I also want to thank O.V. Stolbo-
va and A. Yu. Militarev for important cooperation.

Igor Diakonoff

3 287

CHAPTER ONE

PHONOLOGY

1.1. The phonological system of Common Afrasian can be recon-
structed as follows:

Consonants Sonants

Labial plosives

p

p

b

s

Labial fricatives

f

—

—

Dental plosives

t

t

d

n

o

Dental fricatives and

affricates

s

a(t+s)

a ( t+s)

3(d+z)

—

Palatalized (or bifo-

cal) dental frica-
tives and affrica-

tes

s

a ( t+i)

6 (t+s)

3 ( d+s/z)

ro

Lateral fricatives

1

and affricates

s

a (t+s)

$( t+s)

—

l

Velar plosives

k

k

9

—

Labialized velar plo-
sives

(Post)velar fricati-

kw

kW

9W

ves and affricates

h

x(k+h)

x(k+h)

• • V

9(g+h/y)

Labialized (post)ve-

lar fricatives and
affricates

hw

w

X

w

X

9W

iF

O

Pharyngeal s

h

—

—

—

t

$ (< *a with

Laryngeals

—

—

—

J

falling tone)

Aspiration

h

—

—

—

—

Labialized aspiration

hw

-

-

-

-

1.2. The above composition of the common Afrasian phonological
system is. established as a result of a reconstruction based on the
reflexes in the living languages and, in certain cases, on the fo-
reign transcriptions of the words of the extinct languages.

It should be pointed out that the real phonetics of the Ancient
Stage languages, i.e. Akkadian, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Epigraphic South
Arabian, Old Egyptian, cannot be deduced directly from the old

34

inscriptions. The transcription adopted by scholars is conventional.
It is based not on the oppositions of the semantically minimal pho-
nological pairs in the language, but on the oppositions of the sem-
antically minimal pairs in the writing. The phonetic value of these
"graphophonemes" is established by way of identification with
known phonetic reflexes in other closely related language's (in par-
ticular, in Arabic and Hebrew for Akkadian, in Coptic for Old Egyp-
tian, etc.). Further information can be elicited from the analysis
of the alternations of these "graphophonemes" in specific phonotac-
tic (positional) situations. The reconstruction of the Common Afra-
sian archetypes makes it possible to extend the volume of data for
the phonemic reconstruction of the ancient languages. It also opens
the way for a wider and more exact use of the reflexes of the "gra-
phophonemes" of the ancient languages in the words borrowed by
other languages .

1.2.1. In the labial series the reconstruction of Common Afra-
sian *f and *p as phonemes in their own right is based on coordina-
ted reflexes of Common Chadic and Egyptian: Ch *f. ~ Eg f; Ch *p ~

Eg p (as a rule, in other branches of Afrasian this distinction
(/=/=p) is lost). The reconstruction of the Afrasian opposition *pi
*p is based on the analogous corresponding reconstructions in Chad-
ic. and Omotic; also AA *p > p in Northern Semitic but > *b in South-
ern Semitic; analogous development *p > b is also attested in Ber-
ber. Thus, the common Afrasian subsystem of labials is attested in
its fullest in Chadic languages. They also possess an implosive b

of secondary origin (as a result of contact with now lost laryngeal/
pharyngeal or velar affricate) , and specific series of corresponden-
ces for combinations like *mb, *byi, etc. In Berber the situation
with the reflexes of Common Afrasian labials is not quite clear be-
cause of complex combinatorial alternations under the influence of
*14 as well as of such other original second and even third root con-
sonants that were lost later.

1.2.2. The dental plosives are well preserved in all Afrasian
languages. Thus, the living Semitic languages as well as the Cushi-
tic languages Sidamo, Old Agaw (judging by ancient borrowings in
Go'oz), Oromo, etc. preserve t, t , d; in Berber the reflexes are

t, d (but when geminated ~bt) , d. In Egyptian, Afrasian *t > d. Ana-
logous development is attested in some Cushitic languages (as well
as cases of change t > d, d > r and the like) . Hence Akkadian, Uga-
ritic and South Arabian Epigraphic "graphophonemes" *t, *t, *d can
be safely considered as [t, t, d] .

1.2.3. The so-called emphatic phonemes (which are transcribed
by a dotted letter) are phonetically realised in different Afrasian
languages as velarized or uvularized (e.g. in Arabic), glottalized,
i.e. followed by a glottal stop (in some Ethio-Semitic and modern
South Arabian) , implosive (often in Chadic) and so on. Their origi-
nal articulation was in all probability glottalized. The emphatic
consonants did not enter in an opposition of voiced vs. unvoiced,
but rather formed another opposition: non-emphatic (voiced or unvoi-
ced) vs. emphatic. Thus the opposition voiced : unvoiced was irrele-
vant for emphatic consonants, and the Afrasian protophoneme *t (or
rather *T) could be realised either as [t] or as [d] . Hence it is
reflected as d (in Egyptian, modern Agaw and some other Cushitic)

3-2 287

35

or t (in many Chadic languages) when its emphatic character (glot-
talization, velarization) is lost.

1.3. The reconstruction of the three series of Afrasian sibi-
lants is a most difficult problem. Formerly, affricates were not
reconstructed for Proto-Semitic and Proto-Afrasian. But the neces-
sity of reconstructing affricates is proved by the following:

(a) the Arabic emphatic phonemes 8, z(t)t d(s ) and in several
cases also Arabic s have in some Cushitic languages dual reflexes
of the type s-/-d- or d-/-s- which is indicative of an affricate
in the prototype;

(b) the Egyptian affricate 3 (d in the conventional Egyptologi-
cal transcription) corresponds to all Arabic emphatic sibilants;
its pronunciation is established by comparison with Coptic where 3
is in some cases preserved, while in some other cases > d > t;

(c) in some Chadic languages affricates correspond to Arabic
emphatic s, z(t) , d(i) and also to s;

(d) it is only on the later stages that Akkadian develops gra-
phic means for independent expression of the phonemes s, s, s, 2
(or, more exactly, of the graphic reflexes of Ancient Hebrew S, s,
a, 2, the Akkadian pronunciation being hypothetical). In Old Akka-
dian spellings only three series of syllable signs are used to ex-
press all the sibilant phonemes; we shall conventionally mark them
as SV-, SV- and ZV- (sometimes there is also a group of signs SV-) .
It is known that the ZF-s igns were borrowed by other languages
which used the Akkadian cuneiform writing system, i.e. Elamite,
Hittite, Hurrian, and Urartian, for the designation of their affri-
cates ;

(e) in Egyptian transcriptions of Semitic personal and place
names Egyptian If and 0 (t in the conventional Egyptological tran-
scription) are used everywhere for the Old Akkadian ZF-signs, and
Egyptian s for the Old Akkadian &V-, SV- or SF-signs.

The correspondences of the Old Akkadian graphophonemes with
Arabic phonemes are given below:

Old Akkadian

6 2 2 2

6/s s 2 2

6 s 2

Arabic

Si S2 s 2

-h-, - s # t z'(t) d

61 62 d(s)

Note: Arab. Si - Hebrew s; Arab. S2 ~ Hebrew s; Arab. Si ~ 3ib-
blli, MahrT, Soqotri s; Hebrew s-, -s- (?) ; Arab. 62 ~ 3ibball,
Mahrl, Soqotri s; Hebrew 6.

Thus, the Old Akkadian graphophoneme 2 corresponds to Arabic S2»
s, 2, 2, d and d. This graphophoneme is transcribed by Egyptian 3

(except in the case of Arabic s 2 and sometimes s which are tran-
scribed as e) , and the ZF-signs were used by neighbouring peoples

for their affricates.

All this permits' us to infer, that, first, Arabic S2, s, 2,
z(t) , d and d(§) are reflexes of Common Afrasian affricates and,
second, that their phonetic reflexes (not graphophonemes) still were
affricates in the Old Akkadian period and preserved their affri-
cate status until the 2nd millennium B.C. (because the major part
of our comparative non-Semitic data belongs to that time).

36

The situation with Akkadian graphophonemes of the later period
is given below:

Akkadian

Arabic

§ s s 3

y .y •

S S S Z

s 8 s

S2 S 3

-s# £ z'(t) d

s 2 d(b)

Thus, we see that the signs of the SV and 6v series changed
their value: in Old Akkadian, SV ~ Arab, t, SV - Arab. Si, ~h~,
-s#, si and dz, i.e. it corresponds to the whole group of phonemes
which are not rendered by affricates in Egyptian (in genetically
related words as well as in transcriptions) , in Cushitic and in Chad-
ic; ZV - Arab, sz, s, z, z(t) , d and d(f) , i.e. it corresponds to
all phonemes of affricate origin (excluding t which has a special
series of syllabic signs, viz. SV, Old Akkadian S) .

In classical Akkadian SV- is used for all historically non-af-
fricate phonemes and for the original affricate d, and the SV- ,

SV-, ZV- signs are used for phonemes of affricate origin: viz., SV-
for the historically voiceless affricate, SV- for emphatic and ZV-
for voiced ones. The very existence of an opposition between histo-
rically affricate versus historically fricative (non-affricate) pho-
nemes leads to the suspicion that even at this period of time (from
the beginning of the 2nd to the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C.),
affricates were still retained in Akkadian. This hypothesis is con-
firmed by the correspondence of the SV- series to 6 in Egyptian
transcriptions of Semitic personal names, and by' the usage of this
series for voiceless affricates in Hurrian, Elamite and Urartian.

Comparing our results with the reconstructed system of Proto-
Afrasian phonemes (§ 1.1.) we have to establish that the rule' 'Old
Akkadian S, Akkadian s - Proto-Afrasian dental fricative sibilant;

Old Akkadian Z, Akkadian s, z - Proto-Afrasian affricate' has its
exceptions: thus, Proto-Afrasian * 0 , realized as a phoneme diffe-
rent from *s in many Afrasian languages, is rendered by 6/s which
means that it had lost its plosive element in Proto-Akkadian (pro-
bably > s) , a phenomenon not unusual also in some other Afrasian
languages; and the Proto-Afrasian *d is also treated in another way
than other affricates, though before the Classical Akkadian period
it does not coincide with the fricative sibilants. Therefore the
series of bifocal (palatalized) sibilants and sibilant affricates
deserves special attention.

*s is a rare phoneme, mostly used in the causative marker (Akk.
s— , Hebr. h~, Aram.?:- > Arab.’-, -h~, -s#. South Arabian h-//s~) ,
and in the 3rd person pronoun (Akk. (-)s-, Hebr., Arab., Aram, (-)h-,
South Arabian -h//-s-).. It is quite clear that Afrasian *s had a
tendency to develop into h in Semitic (a parallel but less consist-
ent development seems also to be attested in Berber) •1 The phonet-
ic change *s > h is underlying the change in Arabic of bifocal si-
bilant affricates into aspirate dental plosives and still further
into interdental fricatives, i.e. *c(t+s) > *th > t, *o(t+s) > *th >
£, *%(d+s/iz) > *dh > d. In Aramaic these aspirate dental plosives
have lost aspiration, i.e. *th > t, *th > t; *dh > d.

3-3 287

37

The situation in Akkadian where the original s did not develop
into h is rather more complex. Already in Old Akkadian where the
etymological Afrasian *5 would be expected to be rendered by the z-
series of syllabograms , we find instead, that for this sound the SV
syllabic series was used. We suppose it was not the sibilant ele-
ment of the affricate which was lost here, but the plosive one,
but at the same time this surviving (secondary) sibilant was phone-
tically different from the etymological *s (which was marked by the
SV or SV series). Most probably, this new sibilant was palatalized,
i.e. [*c ' (t+s’ j] > [ts'] > s'. The emphatic and voiced affricates
of this series lost the plosive element but preserved their status
of emphatic and voiced consonants respectively, yielding *s ' and *z '
These latter phonemes could be spelled in the same way as a and 3,
i.e., by the ZV graphic series in Old Akkadian, or the SV and ZV
series (possibly they still were phonetically affricates) in later
Akkadian spellings. 2

The development in Eblaite was quite similar, but the SV series
was here used not only for etymological *6 but also for etymologi-
cal

Thus, the Akkadian subsystem of sibilants and affricates can
be reconstructed as follows:

Conventional transcription Reconstructed phonetics

1/

s

s

s

z

s

Q

q

(8)8

s

s

z

s > s'

S '

- .

s > s'

S

v»

s

s

S > s'

S > Sf

The rendering of *s , *s and *s by one and the same &V (later
SV) series of syllabic signs probably reflected a real merging of
these phonemes in the course of time. It should be noted that in
the Babylonian dialect all these phonemes yielded [s] or [s'] (this
is reflected by the change of the consonant cluster -St- > -l t~ in
conventional spelling, i.e. [-st-] > [-It] phonetically), and only
in the Assyrian dialect they merged in [s] (i.e., -at- > -ss~ in
conventional spellings, that is [-st-] > [tss-] phonetically).

As was noted, Arabic Si and s 2 correspond to a single
Akkadian sibilant phoneme, which was probably lateral, judging by
its correspondences in other Afrasian languages-. But the data of
modern South Arabian, possibly of Hebrew, and of some other Afra-
sian languages show that there had existed two different phonemes,
namely Arab. Si - Mahrl, JibbalT, Soqotri s, Hebr. S-, -S- (?) ;
Egyptian S-, -S-; Berber s > s, Cushitic: Bilin s, Iraqw s (late-
ral), Somali s, Omotic s; Western Chadic *s (Hausa z-, -l- , Zar,
Ngizim s-, Ron Z, etc.). On the other hand, Arab, s 2 ~ Mahrl, Jib-
ball, Soqotri s (lateral), Hebr. £; Egyptian s; Berber *3; Cushi-
tic: Bilin s, Iraqw q (?) , Somali d, Omotic S-, -s or q- , -c ; We-
stern Chadic *0 (Hausa S/s, Zar, Ngizim s-, Ron Z- , -S-, etc.)
Established for Semitic, Berber and Egyptian by A.Yu.Militarev, for
West Chadic by 0 .V. Stolbova) .

From this it can be concluded that the etymological lateral
phonemes *s and *c have merged in Old Akkadian (the affricate hav-
ing lost its plosive element) and thus, both are rendered by the

38

same tv (later §V) series of signs, but we have enough reasons for
reconstructing two phonemes: *s and *a for Proto-Afrasian.

1.4. The velar plosives are well preserved in most Afrasian lan-
guages, but there are some peculiarities of development, e.g. *k >
c, *g > J in Egyptian before i (sometimes also u) , g > 3 in most
Arabic dialects, k > a in the Iraqi dialect, *k > a and s, *g > 3
in some Berber dialects. The "emphasis" is lost in some Cushitic
and Chadic languages; but usally *k. yields a postvelar phoneme q.

The labialized velar plosives are preserved as separate phonemes

in Ethio-Semitic and in some of the Cushitic and Chadic languages;
more often they yield non-labialized consonants but with a change
of the neighbouring vowel to u.

1.4.1. On the contrary, the velar (or postvelar) fricatives
and affricates are not stable: h is preserved better than the other
phonemes, but nevertheless sometimes develops > h. The affricates
usually preserve either the plosive, or the fricative element, the
latter sometimes developing to ' . Often all these phonemes have ze-
ro reflexes (thus in all Berber and in some of the Chadic langua-
ges; but usually they leave some traces by modifying the neighbour-
ing phonemes) .

1.4.2. Pharyngeal ' ( 'ain ) and 1} are, as a rule, rather well
preserved. Thus, they are preserved in Semitic even at the Late
Stage (except Modern Hebrew, where ' is not pronounced, and h > h,
and some of the Neo-Aramaic dialects) ; in Cushitic they are well
preserved in the Southern subbranch, worse in the others, but they
are lost completely only rarely, usually yielding ’, h, etc.; they
still survived in Late Egyptian. They were lost in most of the Ber-
ber languages and in the Chadic branch, but often. causing modifica-
tions of the neighbouring phonemes.

1.4.3. We include the pharyngeal fricative ' Cain ) with some
hesitation in the number of sonants (see below). Genetically, pho-
netically and functionally it reveals some specific peculiarities
(some of them, but not all, are shared by its voiceless counter-
part h) . But , in any case, it is not a member of the original sys-
tem of fricatives (all of them are voiceless) and is not a. plosive.
It is not impossible that Proto-Afrasian had two 'ain's — a plosi-
ve *7 and a sonant ' (similar to Proto-East-Caucasian) . Note that
Southern Cushitic has a plosive 'ain [7] .

1.5. The sonant is a phoneme which could originally perform a

syllabic function (before a consonant), as well as a non-syllabic
one (before vowels or after a closed vowel) ; in morphology and in
syllable formation the sonants could respectively perform the fun-
ctions either of consonants or of vowels. The reconstruction of
Afrasian roots [Diakonoff 1 97 0] shows that the following phonemes
could function as sonants: *g, and, pos-

sibly *' Cain). But in historically documented languages (with the
exception of some Berber languages where up to now L, u can perform
the function of sonants in the classical sense, and some Chadic and
Cushitic languages where the same is true in respect of $)

the syllabic allophones and the non-syllabic allophones developed
into independent phonemes. The non-syllabic allophones yielded the

3-4 287

39

following phonemes: m, n , r, l, j, , ’/i i, the syllabic allo-

phones yielded the sequences: am, an, av, al, ai, au, a’ /au., a' —
thus, e.g., in Semitic. As it seems, their development was quite
similar in Egyptian, Cushitic and Berber languages (though in some
languages a change of the type -g- > -u- was also possible) . As to
Chadic, at least in some of the languages $ and g could preserve
their dual nature, and > -la-, ~ua~.

1.5.1. The glottal stop ’ (hamzah, * alaph ) performs the function
of a non-syllable-forming sonant in in- and auslaut, but phonetical-
ly it is a plosive and thus cannot function as a sonant. Quite hy-
pothetically it can be suggested that there were two phonemes tran-
scribed as ’ (or that ’ is a reflex of two different phonemes) : one
of these phonemes was a plosive consonant and functioned as such,
while the other was equivalent to the Danish Strfd (lit. "jolt"),
viz., a compression of the larynx under the influence of a falling

tone, and in our case functioning as a sonant (the former phoneme
was transcribed above as ’ . and the latter as §) .

The Afrasian phoneme g"7 differs from § by the additional token
of labialization. It yields y and ’ in different languages and posi-
tions .

1.5.2. The sonants are conventionally subdivided into "strong"

(*%> *a‘ *b *o’ and "weak" *%> *P- The "weak" so-

nants (with the exception of *^) are more or less stable only in
initial position. This is connected with the prohibition of voca-
lic anlaut which existed in all Afrasian languages; in other posi-
tions different changes take place.

1.5.3. *m is the most stable of all "strong" sonants; it is wide-
ly used in morphology and word formation; a suggested occasional
change *m > b is dubious .

In Semitic and Berber languages *n is also more or less stable
before a vowel (before a consonant it is mostly assimilated by it;
there are also cases of loss of n before a vowel) ; *1 and *r are
well preserved in these languages.

In Cushitic languages the reflexes of *n and *1 often merge

(usually > n) , as well as the reflexes of *1 and *r, but then the

reflexes of the geminated *11, *rr and non-geminated *1, *r are
usually different {11 in the first case, and r in the second) .

The situation in Egyptian is complicated: *r- is preserved here
at least before a, but *-v# *-rr- > -r- (spelling) and *ri-

perhaps > i,-; *la > na in initial as well as in other positions in

the literary language, but according to the Coptic data, [l] was
preserved in some dialects; *li/u- > i-. There are also cases when
Afrasian *1 is spelled and/or pronounced r, e.g. r' , read [ria']
'sun' ~ Cushitic *IV' ; *ru 'lion' was read [law]. It is quite pro-
bable that the geminated *11 yielded a different reflex from the
non-geminated phoneme.

1.6. The majority of Cushitic and all Chadic languages have to-
nes. The present tone systems differ substantially in the various
languages and are, in all probability, secondary. But it seems
most likely that Proto-Afrasian was itself a tonal language. Tra-
ces of tonal oppositions may be sought for in Akkadian and South
Arabian Epigraphic.

40

REFERENCES

1 In most other Afrasian languages *s in represented as ,
with some notable exceptions: in Egyptian: ' fty 'each' corresponds
to Sem. * astZ 'one, unique, alone', —f to Sem. *-suwa 'his' (but -s
to Sem. *~siia 'her'); in the Dubay cluster of the 'Sidamo group PAA
*s and *s seem to be represented as s and s (or /??).

2 The same type of 'Akkadizing' pronunciation of the second
group of dental affricates seems to have occurred in the early Ara-
maic dialect of the Khabur valley, since in an 9th c. A.D. inscrip-
tion from Tell Fekherye the etymological *o is rendered by the
grapheme s (perhaps for [tsy]?). The usual development in Aramaic
was [*t+^] > [*t+h] > [t] . See Ali Abou Assaf, Pierre Bordreuil,
Alan R. Millard, La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bi-
lingue assyro-arameenne, Paris 1982.

CHAPTER TWO

ROOT AND WORD STRUCTURE

2.1. Our reconstructions are based on the assumption that the
root morpheme was a word minus inflexion, the latter being vocalic,
consonantal, or zero (e.g. in the absolute case, that is, when it
has no syntactic connections, or when it is the predicate, or was
originally the subject of a state) [Diakonoff 1965 Russ., 54—57;
Diakonoff 1 967 , 2 1 1-215] .

It is necessary to take into consideration that the root mor-
pheme can in principle coincide with the word itself, and thus cer-
tain rules of word-formation in Common Afrasian (which are still
valid in many Afrasian languages) can also be applied to root-for-
mation. The permitted sequences of phonemes should comply with the
following rules:

(1) no syllable (including the initial) can begin with a vowel
(hence the important part played by the phoneme 5 , which is the
principal substitute of the vocalic initial) ;

(2) a syllable may not have more than one consonant in in- or
auslaut. Hence the root (or stem) morpheme may not end in two con-
sonants (because of the possible zero or consonantal inflexion) or
in a vowel (because of the possible vocalic inflexion) . The syl-
lable-forming constituent of the root can be represented either by
a vowel (a or i/u) or by a sonant; the latter can function as a
consonant or as a vowel, depending on its position. This means that
a sonant in a word-final (or root-final) position is not forbidden
because of its dual phonetic nature [Diakonoff 1 97 0] .

2.2. The oldest Common Afrasian roots are the nominal roots;
or, more exactly, they belong to the period preceding the forma-
tion of verbs in their own right. These roots have a biconsonantal
structure (CVC, CSC, CVCS where S is a sonant; the sonant can also
occupy the place of any C) . If one includes sonants in the number
of consonants, the Afrasian root could also have a triconsonantal
structure, provided that the second or the third consonant of the
root was a sonant (including the "weak" sonants j/g, H, HW) . There
also were, in Common Afrasian, roots (possibly quite a few of them)
consisting of one consonant and a "weak" sonant — CS . Later a pro-
cess of root-extension began to operate. There were several differ-
ent factors which caused this in Afrasian languages. One of them
was presumably the loss by the sonants (by all of them or original-

42

ly by the "strong" sonants only) of their vocalic nature. Another
factor seems to have been a prosodic one, viz. a levelling of the
root (or stem) morphemes to the pattern of the new triconsonantal
roots having a sonant as one of the consonants. The prosodic level-
ling operated in the following way: the vowels in biconsonantal
roots were lengthened, and the long vowels *a, *Z, *u appeared. A
root with a long root-vowel was then treated as a root with a vowel
plus a virtual sonant either in the place of the third or of the
second radical consonant. These "supplementary" root-consonants (1)
are always "weak" sonants, (2) they are freely interchangeable (*£,
*M, *’) and can occupy the place of either the second or the third
radical and thus are unpredictable: different patterns may appear
in the same language and sometimes even in the. same paradigm; (3)
they do not, in principle, influence the semantics, although the
different variants may, at the later stages, be used for minor se-
mantic differentiations. Still another way of forming triconsonant-
al roots out of biconsonantal ones is the gemination of the second
consonant of the latter. In contradiction to the previous meth-
od, gemination is predictable for all biconsonantal roots except
the *CS pattern, being simply a form of their transformation into
a "triconsonantal grammatical word".

The appearance of triconsonantal roots at the later stages of
Common Afrasian or in individual branches and groups of Afrasian,
allowed the creation of a new pattern of forming triconsonantal
roots out of biconsonantal ones, viz. by adding a root -formative
morpheme, which, following the usage of Indo-European linguistics,
we call a "complement".1 A complement does change the original se-
mantics of the root, although the original semantics can in most
cases still be clearly traced. This means, of course, that the
complement morphemes must originally have, had certain semantics of
their own, but their specific character can be established only when
all roots with complements that can be reconstructed for Common
Afrasian, are collected and analyzed. Complements may appear, as it
seems, only in verbal roots.

In Chadic, Cushitic and Berber the loss of certain postvelar
consonants and of "weak" sonants (all of them, as a rule, leaving
perceptible traces) led to the formation of secondary biconsonantal
roots.2 A small number of original biconsonantal roots survive in
Semitic and Egyptian, but to what degree modern biconsonantal roots
in the other branches of Afrasian also represent' the survivals of
this archaic pattern, is at present very difficult to say. During
the latest period the lexicalization of affixes, word-compounds,
and loans have led to the appearance in' Chadic, and possibly, to a
lesser degree, in the Cushitic and Berber languages, of a consider-
able number of secondary tri- and quadruconsonantal roots (in
Chadic almost all of the’ roots having more than two radicals, belong
to this type) .

The numerous homonymic biconsonantal roots reconstructed for
Common Afrasian seem to suggest the existence of tones in the proto-
language, cf. our hypothesis on the sonantic character of

2.3. As far as the ancient Afrasian system of word-formation is
concerned, our data belong almost exclusively to Semitic languages
of the Ancient and Middle stages, though we have reasons to suppose

43

that the situation in the proto-languages of the other branches had
been similar. Unfortunately, no archaic language is known in the
Chadic and Cushitic branches (with the possible exception of Bedawye)
which could enable us to make reconstructions of the primitive system
of word-formation. One thing, however, is certain, namely that the
hypothesis of the predominantly biconsonantal character of roots in
these branches is not correct; the situation there was, probably,
quite similar to that in Proto-Semitic, though some phonemes which
originally formed part of the root structure may have been lost.
Apart from the archaic means going back to Proto-Afrasian, the
Late Stage languages have everywhere created their own methods of
word-formation; they are quite different in the different branches
and languages, and it is not possible to give even a summary of
them here. We shall therefore discuss primarily the Ancient Semitic
word-formation, and the other branches shall be dealt with only
briefly. (

For the understanding of the history of Afrasian word-formation,
the rules of syllable-formation mentioned above are of paramount
importance .

2.3.1. One characteristic feature of Semitic languages is usual-
ly pointed out in works on Semitic linguistics, viz., that the root
in these languages comprises only consonants. In an overwhelming
majority .of cases the number of consonants is three, seldom two,
four or five, the quadru- or quinqueconsonantal roots being of
obviously secondary origin. As to the vowels, specific vocalic pat-
terns ('schemes'), sometimes combined with certain consonant af-
fixes, either modify the meaning of the root, or express a grammat-
ical category:

Arabic: kataba 'he has written'; kataba 'he corresponded (with)';
’a-ktaba 'he has made smb. to write'; io.-ktuh-u 'he is writing';
iu-katib-u 'he is in correspondence'; £u-ktib-u 'he is making smb.
to write'; katib~u.-n 'someone writing, scribe'; mu-Katib-u-n 'the
corresponding (one)'; mu-ktib-u-n 'making (smb.) to write ' ; ma~
ktub-u-n 'written'; ma-ktab-u-n 'the place where one writes, office,
school, etc. ' .

Akkadian: ’i-ptw? 'he has released'; ’ i-pattar 'he is releas-
ing'; patir-u-m '(the one) releasing'; pat(i)v~u-m 'released' ; 'u-
Sa-^ptir 'he has made (smb.) to release', mu-ga-ptir-u-m '(the one)
making (smb.) to realease', na-ptar-u-m < *ma-ptar-u-m 'smth. with
which one can release, a key', etc.

Hebrew: katab 'he has written'; ii-ktob 'he shall be/is writing1;
hi-krtb 'he made (smb.) to write'; koteb '(the one) writing', etc.

2.3.2. The general formula given, under 2.3.1. and character-
izing the Semitic root is actually completely valid only for Arabic
and the Southern Peripheral Semitic languages. It is valid there
for all verbal as well as for all nominal roots, i.e.: Arabic: kalb-
u-n 'a dog', kulaib-u-n 'a small dog', kilab- 'dogs'; bahr-u-n 'a
sea', bifyar-, bufaur-, or 'a-bijZir- 'seas'; bab-u-n 'a door, a gate',
pi. ’ a-byidb -; ba£t-u-n 'a house', bujput- 'houses'; >ah-u-n 'a
brother', ‘ihj^-an- 'brethren'. Here the different vocalization of
the noun is grammatically relevant, and thus represents internal
flexion. In Arabic this pattern is still valid even for loanwords.3

44

In originally denominative nouns (viz. nouns which were formed
from nouns) internal flexion may obtain only in the formation of
diminutive and collective nouns. The latter served as a base for
the formation of the so called ’broken' plural ( piuratis fvaotus) ,
on which see below. It seems that the oldest type of collective
nouns, used as plurality marker, was *sa-C iC 2aC 3- > ’ a-CiC2aC3~.

It is this type that is used most often as 'broken plural' in
ancient Southern Peripheral Semitic languages. Put as soon as the
device of internal flexion was once used for the formation of col-
lective plural, the patterns of nouns capable to function as plu-
rality markers began to multiply. In Northern Semitic languages
this phenomenon is attested only in embryo.

2.3.3. It is possible to distinguish in Afrasian languages two
separate groups of words, according to the devices of their forma-
tion. The first group comprises verbs and derivative nouns, which
are pervaded by internal flexion to such an extent, that it is
entirely impossible to reconstruct any root vowel for these lexemes.1*
The second group comprises nouns which are not connected with verbs;
these had a permanent, not semantically determined vocalization in
the Ancient Semitic languages, e.g.: Akk. katb-u-m 'dog', pl. kalb-
u; bab-u-m 'door', pl. bab(-an)-ui bit-u-m 'house', pl. btt-at^u-m
(except some rare cases, i.e. when from the nouns denominative
verbs or diminutives were formed). In Hebrew and Old Aramaic the
situation is in principle the same. Though the changes of vocaliza-
tion in cases of inflexion of primary nouns are attested here,
nevertheless these changes are predictable and of phonetic origin,
i.e. Hebrew kap&r 'village', kapar-o 'his village' — pl. kspar-im
(the change in the stem is here due only to dynamic stress). The
internal flexion is used here but rarely, and alongside of a main
external plural morph, as in Akk. sehr-tt-m 'small' — pi. seZfher-u
(cf. kalb-u, bab-u) ; * alak-t-u-m 'way, behaviour' — pl. ’ alkak-at-
u-m (cf. bit-at-u-^m) ; Hebr. kalab < *kalb- 'dog' (the change of
vocalization is due t,o phonotactic reasons only — a syllable may
not end in two consonants), katb-P 'his dog', but pl. kolab-im with
a secondary infixed *-a-.5 The nouns of the types C3aC2C3~, C3iC2C3-,
C1UC2C3- automatically form in Hebrew plurals in —Cm from stems pat-
terned as C3aC2aC3~, C 3iC 2aC3~, C3uC2aC 3~, but this pattern’ with-
out the suffix —Cm had no specific semantics of its own, includ-
ing the semantics of plurality. That is why in all these cases we
have every reason to consider as roots the forms *kalb~, *bab~,
*kapar~, *sahr- (sehr-) , etc., but not *ktb, *bub, *kpr, *shr. Only
’alaktu as a verbal noun from *haZak- 'to walk' has a consonantal
root ’ Ik < *hZk.

In Egyptian, too, the formation of primary nouns (designating
events and notions characteristic of human existence from the earl-
iest times) was quite analoguous, as it is possible to infer from
the absence of positional changes in nominal forms belonging to the
same root.

But, on the basis of internal Semitic data, we have been able
to establish, that out of the two stem variants of the word 'tongue'
in ancient Semitic languages, viz. His-an- and Has-an-, the lat-
ter is the original one. This conclusion is corroborated by the
Egyptian ib < *libb-/Hubb~, but ns < Has 'heart'; k\b 'intestine'

45

*

< *karb~, because of the shift -r- > -J- in in- and auslaut positi-
ons, cf. Common Semitic *karm- 'hill, vineyard' — Egyptian k’,m
(/ka’m/ < /karm-/) ; but Common Semitic kir-r- 'lamb, goatling' —
Egyptian t’ (/ci5-/ < *kir~) 'youngling, chick'; Common Afrasian
*liu‘ -at-, 'a (wild) cow' — Semitic *li’-t~, *li’ -at- (Akk.

litt-, Hebr. Ve’9i) — Egyptian iw’,-t, etc.

The reconstruction of the Proto-Berber vocalization of
primary nouns is obscured, first, because two layers of old definite
articles (which have lost their determinative function) are super-
imposed upon the stem here, and, second, by the shift a, i, u > a||

$ (as a rule) . Under these conditions secondary long vowels sometimes
emerged in order to avoid homonyms. But as the place of zero vowel
(or s) in the word is, according to the laws of Berber phonetics,
mobile, it is not clear whether we should reconstruct the archetypes
of, say, a-rgaz (status liber), u-rgaz (status annexus) ' man' as
*ha-rgaz~, *ua-rgaz~, or *ha-rugaz~, *ua-rugaz~, or, e.g., *ha-ragz~,
*ua-ragz~. Some primary nouns are extremely shortened, e.g. u 'son',
ul-t 'daughter'.

2.4. The number of primary nouns with a vowel as part of the
root was, in the Afrasian languages (and in Ancient Semitic langua-
ges in particular), considerable. As a matter of fact, all primary
nouns belonged here. These roots belong to the type CVC- (and CVC-),
as well as CV1CV1C-. The sonant (S) could substitute either C or V but
so that the rules of syllable structure could be. observed, i.e. SV-,
SVC-, C0-, CQC-, CVS-. This was possible, because & could play the
part of both a vowel and a consonant. Possibly, there was also a
type CVCS-. After the sonants have been transformed into the conson-
ants m, n, r, l, i, u, ’, and the syllables am, an, ar, al, aj., ay.,
primary nouns of the type CVS-, CVC-, CaSC-, CVCS- (the latter type
may be realized as CVCS-V, CVCaS-, CVCSa+CV, CVCaS# , depending on
the inflexion), and also CP1CV1C- emerged. All this means that all
the roots of the types C\iCzCi~, CiSC- , CV\CVzC- do not belong to
the number of primary nouns. Thus, it is but natural to consider
them as verbal roots. This is corroborated by the fact that the
formation of types of stems other than those enumerated above, can
be explained in accordance with the principles of .syllable formation
under conditions of the Ancient Semitic prefixal verbal conjugation.

In all probability, the most ancient type of the Semitic root
was CiVCz. The primary character of such roots is a linguistic
universal. The secondary origin of the third ropt consonant (C 3) is
often quite clear, in nouns as well as in verbs |SISAYa 1981; 1982;

1 986 | . We shall suggest a hypothesis on the origin of C 3 below.

2.5. Here it is important to point out that Semitic verbal stems
(as well as Berber and Old Cushitic ones similar to them) could be
formed according to models of vocalization different from the nomin-
al stems, and this became an important factor for the enlargement
of the vocabulary.

Thus, marking the consonant of the prefix as P, we may obtain
the patterns PV-CiVCz, PV-C\CzV(Cz)~. These patterns have no restrict-
ions as to the quality of their vowels and consonants as far as the
Afrasian laws of syllable formation are concerned. Even in the case
of PV~C\VCzV the suffixation of not only +C3F, but also +V is pos-
sible through the creation of a glide, homorganic to the last V of

46

the stem, for example: PV-CVCij-+V , PV-CVCuu+V , PV-CVCa’+V. The only
prohibited pattern is the type *PV-CiVCzC3~, even in case when either
Cz or C 3 or both are sonants, because the laws of syllable forma-
tion do not allow to add either a suffix -CV or a zero suffix to
the sonant functioning as consonant, nor a vocalic suffix to a son-
ant functioning as consonant, nor a vocalic suffix to a sonant func-
tioning as vowel. But such a stem, when containing a sonant, may
be transformed into the pattern -CVSaC- or -CVCaS, etc., as was the
case with nominal stems.

Thus, prefixation of verbal inflexions gives wider possibilities
for the formation of triconsonantal roots, and this also leads to
the enlargement of the set of possible verbal stems, also with the
help of a noun-forming prefix, e.g. *mV~, *tV- , *sV~, etc.

As it was pointed out above, the internal inflexion (the so call-
ed interfix, or broken inflexion) actually pervades the entire
verbal word, so that it is impossible to establish the root vowel.
The Semitic languages (especially Southern Semitic) are characteri-
zed by a great diversity of secondary word patterns derived from
verbal roots. Each of them has special semantics of its own ( nomina
aotionis, names of place of action, names of professions, etc.). A
similar situation may have existed in Ancient Berbero-Libyan,
though it is very difficult to trace a semantically relevant system
of vocalic patterns of deverbal stems at the modern level of these
languages .

2.5.1. Several systems of principles have been proposed for the
vocalization of Old Egyptian. They were based on different assump-
tions concerning the syllable structure and the character of dynamic
stress and their changes up to the Coptic language of the first
centuries A.D., which already did spell vowels. It is necessary to
note here the works by E.Edel, G.Fecht, W.Vycichl, T.M. Thacker,
J.Vergote. All these scholars follow the Semitic models in one way
or another, but their reconstructions are sometimes doubtful. Thus,
we believe that the phoneme signs marked as ‘ , i, W, y in modern
transliterations of Old Egyptian hieroglyphics, originally denoted
only consonants, but other scholars are of the opinion that from
the very beginning they could be matres lectionis , and expressed long
vowels, too. Egyptologists often regard the pattern of the active
participle *CiaCzi.C- as common for Proto-Semitic and Proto-Egyptian,
but this can hardly be true. First, this would presuppose the exist-
ence of an opposition active vs. passive voices in Afrasian. This,
however, is most dubious, and does not match the semantics suggest-
ed by J.Vergote for a number of vowels supposedly belonging to this
hypothetical pattern: TzfJ-W 'serpent' < */hafi ’-/ 'creeping, coil-
ing'; i'h 'month' < */yz''Lh/ 'marching'; hrw 'day' < */’Hariu-/
'catching fire, beginning to burn' . It is quite evident that these
lexemes as interpreted by Vergote are participles of state, which
were formed in Semitic languages (as can be seen, first of all, in
Akkadian) according to the pattern *C\aCz(i/u/a)C3~, but not accord-
ing to the pattern *CiaCziC3~. Second, the pattern of active par-
ticiple *C\SCz-LC3~ is not even Common Semitic, being absent in
Southern Peripheral and Ethio— Semitic languages, and thus certainly
not to be assigned to Common Afrasian.

47

However, it is quite evident that the scarcity of prefixes and
suffixes in Egyptian ought to have stimulated the deve lopment of inter-
fix patterns (just as in Semitic), i.e. vocalization patterns for
diverse nomina agentis , nomina aotionis, adverbials, etc., includ-
ing those which could function as predicates and functionally cor-
responded to Semitic, Berber and Old Cushitic verbal forms. Egyp-
tian did not possess a prefixal verbal conjugation, however it did
have some word-forming prefixes; its word-forming patterns were
hence typologically similar to (but not identical with) the Semitic,
as shown by J.Osing [Osing 1976].

2.6. In all branches of the Afrasian language family there is
a considerable amount of verbal roots with one "weak" root conson-
ant, i.e. ’ , u, or j,, and also n, whose origin as a root formative
morph is generally accepted at least in the beginning of the root.
Probably, the "weak" root consonants ’ , u, i and also n were used
in order to adapt biconsonantal roots to the triconsonantal pattern,
necessary for the arrangement of vocalic infixes according to
certain established patterns of vocalization (a good example of
change by analogy) .

In fact, there are in Semitic languages biconsonantal verbal
roots (usually having long vowels but not necessarily in all the
forms; length is in all probability secondary). But every possibi-
lity is used to adapt them to the tric'onsonantal pattern (.u, i or ’
is considered as one of the root consonants, depending on the
quality of the long vowel in the root — u, t; or a).7

The situation in the oldest Egyptian was quite similar.

In Berber and especially in the Cushitic and Chadic languages
there are a lot of verbal roots which are traditionally considered
as biconsonantal (W.Vycichl even considers this phenomenom to be a
special feature of 'Hamitic' languages which opposes them to the
Semitic ones). But all these languages belong to the Late Stage
and, as a rule, they have lost the original "weak" consonants *$<,

*£, *’ (and *flu) as well as, most often, the laryngeal and pharyn-
geal consonants. So there is reason to infer that the majority of
verbal roots were triconsonant ai also in these languages. At- the same
time in most triconsonantal roots only two consonants (most often
the first two consonants) play the most important part as far as
semantic distinctions are concerned. As to the third consonant, it
functions as a "complement" which partly modifies the semantics.

In certain cases the situation is more clear. Thus, verbs with
u- as the first radical were sometimes obviously formed from the
corresponding biconsonantal roots; verbs with the first radical j,-
are, in the majority of cases, but a variety of the verbs with the
first radical u~ and often alternate with them. In some Semitic
languages the verbs with the first radical y- have completely coin-
cided with the verbs with the first radical £-. (In general, the
sonants u/u and t/£ were, as it seems, allophones of a single pho-
neme. This assumption allows to explain quite a number of types of
word-formation, in particular in the Cushitic and Chadic languages.)
Imperatives and nomina aotionie of the verbs with the first radical
u- often preserve the primary form of the stem, viz. two consonants
with a short vowel between them.

48

Another category of primary roots is, as was noted, compos-
ed of roots with two consonants and a vowel, which is placed either
between them ( mediae -infirmae or "empty") or after them (ultimae
infirmae) .° In this case, in order to adapt the root to the tricon-
sonantal pattern, a consonant, viz. ~u~ or -j- (depending on the
quality of the primary vowel which, in turn, may depend on the
transitivity or intransivity of the verb) is inserted (or just re-
presented by vowel length) either in the middle or in the end.9 The
degree of consistency in the adaptation of the triconsonantal pat-
tern varies in the different Semitic languages; quite often the
forms of the 'verba mediae infirmae' may not phonetically be as-
signed to a triconsonantal pattern.10 On the other hand, if the
vowel depended only on transitivity or intransitivity, i.e. was
only a vocalic infix, it should not be a long one, because gram-
matical inflexion is here in principle represented by short vowels.
The form of Akkadian ’ i-mut , Arabic ia-niut-u with long u (derived
from a hypothetical is hardly caused by phonetic reasons,

because in Akkadian + vowel yields a short a; as to Arabic, a
combination of phonemes u + u should there theoretically be preserv-
ed. Probably, the length was caused by the fact that the inflexio-
nal vocalization of the biconsonantal root, as it originally was,
even at that time required length of the vowel, in order to obtain
the prosodic levelling to the corresponding form of the triconso-
nantal root. However, some Semitic languages retain relics with a
short vowel in the "empty" ('verba mediae infirmae') roots, cf.
n. 9.

The "weak" radical ’, j, may be an actual primary radical of
the verb. In this case it is preserved in all forms (Akkadian ’£-
s' al 'he asked'; 'u-^parri' 'he dispersed') except where this was
not possible because of general phonetic rules (Akkadian 'tmur <
*iV-’mur 'he saw'). However, the "weak" radical is more often but
virtual, being reflected only by the quantity of the corresponding
vowel in the process of adaptation of biconsonantal roots to the
triconsonantal pattern (Akkadian 'i-bas. 'he shamed himself'; how-
ever, in Aramaic b' s 'to be false, bad' the ’ is pronounced • (also
in Akkadian 'i-b’is 'he smelt bad'). Also n may be either a real
radical consonant or an original prefix, or else it may be used as
a means of adaptation to the triconsonantal pattern by analogy with
the original prefix.11 The situation with the verbs where the "weak"
consonant is the last radical, is similar. There, too, a complete
correspondence with the would-be triconsonantal patterns usually
does not obtain.

Finally, it is evident that those triconsonantal verbal roots,
in which the third radical is identical with the second (verba se~
cundae geminatae) , were formed on the base of biconsonantal foots.

It is proved not only by the existing irregular forms, but also
because the last radical may alternate with other consonants ("com-
plements") , i.e. Akkadian *dbb 'to speak' // Ancient Hebrew *dbr;
Akkadian *&ll (< *sll) 'to capture' // Arabic sib, etc. There is no
reason to see here either an assimilation or a dissimilation.

In Old Egyptian there is a widely spread type of verbs with two
radicals. They cannot be considered as verbs with a lost second or
final radical *u or *i , because of certain phonetic reasons. The

4 287

49

Egyptian verbs with actual medial u, i (in the Old Egyptian dialect)
are completely adapted to the triconsonantal pattern, and always
preserve u and i, (except cases where their loss is caused by regul-
ar phonetic laws, or by specific orthographic reasons).

The Egyptian verbs with the third radical u or i reveal their
secondary origin by the inconsistency in the formation of the dif-
ferent derivatives, e.g. certain denominative forms based on rela-
tive adjectives in -j-. These forms also differ from the bieonso-
nantal forms proper.

2.7. Thus, biconsonantal verbal roots undoubtedly did exist in
Common Afrasian. But the majority of verbs do have three radicals,
neither of which belongs to the group of "weak" consonants (i.e.
is neither u, •£, ’ , nor n) .

Nonetheless it is possible to demonstrate that such verbs, at
least in the overwhelming majority of cases, are the reflexes of
original biconsonantal root nuclea (cf. above, examples on the
alternations *dbb// *db-r, *sll// *sl-b) . We have already pointed
out that the function of main semantic distinction obviously belongs
to only two consonants (usually the first and the second, sometimes
the second and the third) .

Probably, the third radical, auxiliary in its origin, was ag-
glutinated after the preceding vocalic inflexion which, in turn,
was automatically transformed into internal inflexion. Similar
"complements" to originally monosyllabic roots did also exist in
Indo-European.

The rise of the all-embracing system of highly developed inter-
nal inflexion in Semitic languages, and in Afrasian languages in
general, must in any case be referred to deep antiquity, and to the
time of the existence of the ergative construction, when a simple
form of the non-augmented nominal stem (absolute form) was simulta-
neously both a root and the most common nominal form, viz. the re-
gular expression of direct (absolute) case. The prohibition of the
formation of roots and stems with biconsonantal final clusters may
be explained only by the existence of a zero case, because these
clusters do not violate the laws of Afrasian syllable-formation
when they precede vocalic case inflexion. But when the forms of
declension with outer vocalic inflexion emerged (especially the
Nominative case in -u) , this constant outer inflexion should have
preserved the root of the verbal noun from the penetration in it
of any auxiliary vocalic elements.12 In the absence of forms with
zero flexion, infixation of vowels, so widely spread in Afrasian
languages, would probably not have been possible.

2.8. The early rise of this abundant, well-developed and all-
embracing system of internal flexion is the main reason for the
unique features of the Afrasian root. As part of the root nucleus
CVC the vowel (in majority of cases it was, probably, /a/) had
only minor significance as means of semantic differentiation in
comparison to the consonants, and could be substituted by interior
vocalic inflexion. This meant, that the original patterns of root-
formation had very restricted capacities as means for the enrich-
ment o.f the vocabulary. The number of potential roots was practical-
ly equivalent to the number of combinations of consonants by two
minus incompatible combinations: one should, e.g. take into account

50

the phonetic incompatibility in one root of consonants close to
each other as to the locus of their articulation.13

Thus, not only the widening of the vocabulary on the basis of
the already existing stock of lexical stems was necessary (this
process was based on the interior inflexion whose function was to
define more precisely the semantics), but also an augmentation of
the number of the lexical roots themselves. As word-compounding
(with the exception of reduplication) was a rare phenomenon in
Afrasian languages from the oldest times14, an increase in the num-
ber of roots was needed in order to enlarge the vocabulary. It was
achieved through the lengthening of biconsonantal root nuclea up
to triconsonantal roots, and later on, also via "secondary" onoma-
topoeia (cf. below, n. 13).

Probably the main means of formation of third radicals, apart
from the formal adding of "weak" consonants ’ , u, -i, n (and ') and
full or partial reduplication of the root, was the expansion of
the root by means of originally morphological elements. A gram-
matical origin of certain radicals is quite clear — thus the initial
n~, t-y *- < s-, in some African- Afrasian languages also m-, are

derived from pronouns or verbal stem affixes (cf. below). But in
the majority of cases the grammatical origin of the "complements" is
not apparent, because the morphemes in question have long ago lost
their productivity. Sometimes it is also possible to interpret h-
and (in Berber) b— in initial position as former affixes, but the
origin of the "complements" in the final position is not yet explain-
ed, except for in certain names of animals and in case of *-k which
seems to express instantaneous action.

An analogy to these and some other phenomena may be found in
some later features of the Hausa language: za ’to go1, zaikake 'to
depart, to set off suddenly'; hau 'to rise, to go up', hayppa 'to
clamber'; kama 'to hold', kamata 'to be obliged'. Possibly also
other phenomena played their part in the formation of the third
"strong" radicals, for example, metathesis.15

The lengthening of the root could also take place via consonan-
tization of syllable-forming sonants which were transformed into
an additional radical consonant. As it seems, the majority of quadru-
consonantal and quinqueconsonantal verbal roots were formed in this
way (apart from cases of simple reduplication of biconsonantal roots
and rare cases of word-compounding) . Sometimes the root could be
lengthened by adding "expressive" consonants, i.e. Arabic tahisa 'he
licked', *las 'tongue'; Arabic fuh- 'fragrant'; f(y)h 'to spread (of
smell)'; f(y)h 'to blow (of wind)'; Saho-'Afar fug-d < *fuy 'spirit,
god' .

Whether it is possible to regard Ancient Semitic languages as
actually reflecting the Common Afrasian conditions or not, it should
be important to point out that a huge amount of derivative nouns
(especially the nomina actionis , or so-called masdar' s) as well as
of adjectives, is formed in Semitic from verbal roots. They follow
certain patterns, each pattern having specific semantics of their
own. No vocalization pattern is fortuitous, but it corresponds to a
particular semantic set: name of action or state, participle of
action, participle of state, name of profession, name of place,
name of instrument, etc. Apart from vocalization, a considerable

4-2 287

31

part in the formation of these nouns is played also by prefixes,
especially *mV~, *tV~, *SV~, seldom *iV~. Of course, in living lan-
guages of the Late Stage, differences between pattern semantics are
obliterated to a considerable degree, and the pattern + semantic
correlation rules are not followed quite so strictly.

2.9. All this concerns only the verbal nouns, including
those derived from denominative verbs. As we see, there were a
great number of completely different patterns of vocalization of
these secondary nouns. This is of major importance for the analysis
of Egyptian, Cushitic and Chadic languages. In Egyptian, in all
Chadic and in the majority of cases also in Cushitic languages,
the verb either consists of a verbal noun plus a copula which was
conjugated according to a pattern similar to that of the Ancient
Semitic and Berbero-Libyan verb (in Cushitic), or (in Egyptian and
probably in Chadic) it is formed on the base of attributive or
prepositional constructions. From this it may be inferred that in
distinction from the Semitic and Berber verbs, as well as from
Cushitic verbs of the so-called strong conjugation, all the other
Cushitic verbs may have practically arbitrary vocalization, because
it depends on the vocalization of the pattern of the verbal noun
to which the copula is attached; but in turn the vocalization
of each separate 'verbal' noun may have at that diachronic level
been determined by the same rules as the nominal vocalization in
general; i.e., theoretically, also a primary noun could function
as the base for the secondary verbal form. A somewhat smaller
choice of allowed verbal vocalization patterns is to be expected
for Old Egyptian and Chadic, because possessive constructions which
were used there as verbal predicates, may not have been formed with
any arbitrary deverbative noun, but probably only with participles,
masdars, or nouns with a similar meaning.

2.10. As we have seen, apart from deverbative nouns there are
nouns belonging to the primary nominal stock. The vocalization pat-
tern of these nouns is of no semantic value. This may be easily
demonstrated by comparison of a list of primary nouns with the
vocalization patterns cited above.

Thus, the Semitic pattern C\aCzCx- designates the product,
object or result of action, but it is not possible to include in
this group kalb- 'dog', qarb- 'intestine', ' ain- 'eye', etc.

The pattern C\%C^C^~ designates notions connected with a verbal
action, but it is not possible to include here *§i,b- 'wolf', *kibr-
'bank, shore', 'nine', etc.

The pattern CxaCzaCi- designates names of profession, but it is
not possible to include here Akkadian gammal- 'camel', etc.

It is easy to multiply the examples. A number of vocalization
patterns in the group of primary nouns do not have any counterparts
in the group of deverbative semantic patterns.

The fact that the primary nouns are not deverbative (in opposi-
tion to the second group of nouns) is obscured in Southern Semitic
languages by the ease of creation of denominative verbs. The latter
may be formed there practically from any noun, so that sometimes it
may be difficult to tell, in what case the noun is original, and in
what case the verb. The situation here is still more complicated
because primary nouns change their vocalization in the process of

52

formation of plurals, diminutives and other derivatives. The specific
position of the group of primary nouns may here be seen only in the
fact that their semantics do not correlate with the semantic type of
the corresponding vocalization pattern of deverbative nouns. In this,
the situation is the same as in Northern Semitic. languages .

But in Northern Semitic languages of the Ancient stage, as we
have already pointed out, the vocalization of the primary nouns is,
as a rule, constant, and denominative verbs from them are not so
easily derived. So, in the great majority of cases, the nouns of
the primary group are not related to verbs at all. It is a specific
group of nouns as regards their word-formation, . its main feature
consisting first of all in the preservation of the original root
vowal.

The all-embracing system of interior vocalic inflexion in the
Semitic languages brought enormous possibilities for word-formation,
and this has made other means unnecessary.

There is however one more widely used means of ward-formation,
viz. suf fixation without alternation of stem vowels. But these suf-
fixes are very few: -an- with individualizing semantics (Akkadian
vah'i(i)- 'big', rabi’-cm- 'governor of a town', sulm- 'peace; gree-
ting; felicity', sulm-an- 'congratulatory gift'); and the suffix
of relative adjectives, marking also the (place of) origin (the so-
called nisbah) ~ii~ with variants ~ai~, -aii-, -ai-1& : Akkadian
mahr-ii- 'first, the one before'; * aSsup-ii-, ’ aSsup-cii- 'Assyrian';
sub(a)r-ii- 'Subarean'; *ekatt-v-t- 'palace woman, harem woman',
etc. Cf. also below, on the function of the feminine gender marker.

In historically documented Semitic languages of the Ancient and
Middle stages, word-compounding is practically unknown. Full redu-
plication is also seldom used, 7 Both these means of word-formation
are much more widely used in other languages of the Afrasian family,
in particular, in the Cushitic and Chadic ones, which also have
several productive affixes proper to them and unknown to Semitic
languages. Means of enrichment of the repertory of verbal lexemes
with the help of prepositional and locative preverbs and postverbs
are also lacking in the latter. Thus, all resources of stem-forma-
tion in Semitic languages are created solely by interior vocalic
inflexion in combination with a restricted number of affixes pro-
bably of pronominal origin. This results in the stability of the
Semitic root and stem: any positional alternations of consonants
and vowels lead to the destruction of the semantic correlations of
the derivative lexemes. That is why positional (phonotactic) alter-
nations may be observed in an appreciable number only in the Semitic
languages of the Late Stage, when the structural principles of the
Semitic, and the Afrasian languages in general, are no more rele-
vant .

i particular situation is observed in Cushitic languages where
there is a great variety of completely different types of word-for-
mation, which- vary not only from one subbranch to another but even
inside these subbranches. These processes took probably place at
the stage when Cushitic had split up into subbranches or into units
of an even lower level. This fits the notion about the general lack
of homogeneity in Cushitic which, perhaps, must be classified not
as a single branch, but as several branches of the Afrasian family;

4-3 287

53

it might be also reasonable to treat it as a 'family' or even 'super-
family' in the Afrasian 'phylum'.

In this place we have not touched upon the stem-formation of
the conjugated verbal forms; this topic will be treated below. Its
principles are similar to those of the stem-formation of the verbal
nouns .

REFERENCES

1 A complement usually occupies the position of the third
radical consonant, but sometimes also of the first one. It may
often be a survival of a 'stirps' affix (see infra).

2 These roots may also preserve traces of the gemination of
the second radical, cf. for Chadic [Porkhomovsky 1972, 22—27].

3 Quite often the vowel preceding the last root consonant in
the imperfective (in Akkadian in the perfective) is considered
as such root vowel. But this description of the phenomenon, at
least in case of triconsonantal roots, must be regarded as arti-
ficial; the vowels in the two forms are apophonic, so that none

of the two in the opposition perfective : 'imperfective (or punctive:
durative) can be regarded by right as the original one. The problem
is connected with the question, whether there exists an 'original'
grammatical form among the different Ancient Semitic (or Ancient
Afrasian) finite verbal forms, or the system of apophonic verbal
forms came into being from the very beginning of the existence of
the Afrasian verb as such.

4 As it seems, these patterns may have resulted from the
infixation of an original diminutive suffix (-5/-aj, etc.). We
consider as diminutive a large group of patterns which are vocal-
ized according to the types: Cii/uC^aCs-, C i t/u.Czaj/'tf.C 3 - , Cz.aC2.ajL/
uC 3-. Apart from the diminutive meaning proper, these patterns
could have cajoling, respectful or, vice versa, pejorative semantics.
At the earlier stages of Afrasian languages these patterns have
been productive, and had a rather wide semantic range: thus, Sem.
*’ilah- (alongside of ’il-) 'god', *’inas- (alongside of *’ins-dn-
'man' , and *nis-/^~ 'people' ; also in Cushitic) ; Akk. suhar-
'(servant) boy, lad', su/ahir- (<*sVhair~) 'small child' (alongside
of sahr- 'little'); Arab, kulajb- 'little dog' (alongside of kal-b-
'dog'; cf. Berb. ta-funas-t 'cow' (cajoling) < *pans — diminutive
*punas- ’particoloured(?) ' . It is possible that also the Berb.
a-rgaz (i-rgaz) 'man' < *rugaz-(?) also belongs here.

5 J. Greenberg has shown that an analogous development is proper
to Afrasian languages as a family [Greenberg 1955a].

6 Cf., however, *liy.’-at- 'cow', possibly < *lilP (a) t~, as
variant of

7 For example, Arab, ja-qiim-u. '(he) gets up' as if from the
complete triconsonantal root *qyjn, ia-ttb-lA '(he is) pleasing, get-
ting better) < *tjb (but in other Semitic languages also *tifb and
*t’b) etc. Cf. the Hebrew verbal forms qam < *qama, qam-ta, ' uai-ia-
qom with short vowel.

8 On the origin of the verba ultimae infirmae from CVC— type
roots see Diakonoff, Proto-Afrasian and Old Akkadian (forthcoming).

54

9 If such a root had really been, originally triconsonantal ,

the variants *ia-CiC2u/i/a(C3)~ should have existed here too, as
they exist in triconsonantal verbs proper, depending on transiti-
vity, cf. below. In such a case we would get different patterns of
vocalization independently of the quality of the second radical, * #
or But in fact, the radical always corresponds to the vocaliza-

tion, i.e. there is no verb with u-vocalization and *i as the
second radical, or with i -vocalization and *u as the second radical.
This means, that in the process of transition to the triconsonant-
al pattern the second radical was chosen in correlation with the
vocalization which already existed by that time in the biconsonant-
al root, and may have had a grammatical meaning. The same is true
of the verbs with the third "weak" radical.

10 In Egyptian, in the triconsonantal roots, which were form-

ed by the insertion of the sonants £-, u- in the place of the first
radical, the choice of sonant depended, as it seems, on the origi-
nal vocalization of the biconsonantal root morpheme. That is why
they often correspond to Semitic mediae infirmae roots, i.e. the
roots with a supposed sonant *~i- or as a second radical. This

correspondence of phoneme sequences has been revealed by Anna G. Be-
lova and will be further on referred to as "Belova's law".

11 It may happen that etymologically the same verbs have actual
radicals ’> ii, i in some of the languages but belong to verba mediae
infirmae in other languages. Thus, in Old Egyptian *m(^)t 'to die'
is a triconsonantal verb, though this is obscured by the spelling;
but in Akkadian and Hebrew it is a mediae infirmae verb. The verb
*suh 'to laugh, to cry joyously' has a triconsonantal pattern in
Hebrew, but in Akkadian, Ugaritic and Arabic (|| sfh) it is a mediae
infirmae verb. Such examples are rather numerous ,. and this indicat-
es that the adaptation of biconsonantal verbal roots according to
the triconsonantal pattern took place after (or also after) the Com-
mon Semitic stage, and was different in the different languages.

12 On the Absolute case in -0//-a and the Afrasian ergative
see below. There is no possibility to discuss here in detail the
theory of word-formation and inflexion elaborated by J.Kurylowicz
[Kurylowicz 1958; 196l]. The author discusses the well-established
Semitic verbal stem, where the vocalization has only morphological
functions, and the hypothetical primary root-vowel is already lost,
and he demonstrates the apophonic character of the vocalization of
the Semitic verb. However, apophony cannot be traced in the origin-
al nominal word-formation patterns in Afrasian languages.

13 It is necessary to point out a very interesting phenomenon
which is rather widely spread in Semitic languages (especially in
Arabic) but not unknown in other language families. This phenomenon
consists of semantic connection between phonetically (acoustically
or articulator ily) close roots, which are not regular reflexes.

Thus, cf. the following root series in Arabic: ksr, ksf, qsm (the
original root *q/kac~?) ; qt' , qtt, qtl < *qtl (the original root
qat-?) ; gdd, §d,/t, 3 dm , §zz, gz’ (the original root *ga$-?) . All
these roots have the meaning 'to cut off', 'to tear', 'to break off',
'to strike off', 'to kill', 'to divide', etc. Cf. in Akkadian qat—

(< *qat~) 'hand' and the verbs kss 'to cut off', ksp 'to break up',
gdm 'to castrate', gzz 'to clip, to cut (hair)', etc. This pheno-

4-4 287

55

menon have been studied in our country by N.V.J usmanov, S.S.Maizel',
A. Yu.Militarev [Maizel' 1 983 ; Militarev 1973], but a comprehensive
explanation has not yet been suggested. Probably this is a case of
onomatopoeia, not only direct (imitation of natural sounds) but also
secondary (imitation of already existing roots, cf. Russian bryznut',
prysnut’ , dryznut’ 'to sprinkle'; etc. Only one verb out of these
three is an old one) . It is also quite evident that phonic incompa-
tibilities valid for one dialect, but not for another, also played
their part, as well as interdialectal loans; the influence of
women's speech is also possible. Women's speech is clearly dist-
inguished in archaic languages as Yana, Chukchee, Sumerian and a
number of others . In other languages the phenomenon has been much
less studied. However, in the Beyrouth dialect of Arabic, ' is a
"men's sound", and in women's speech it is replaced by ’ (D.O.Edzard,
personal communication). Be it as it may, the phenomenon in ques-
tion is yet one more means of word-formation, not studied before,
and which is probably diachronically rather late.

14 Root- and stem-compounding is rather widely spread in Ber-
ber languages. But it is quite rare in Semitic and Egyptian, and is
possible there only for primary biconsonantal roots. As t.Q the
Cushitic, Omotic and Chadic languages, it is difficult to distin-
guish the word-compounding there from addition of affixes (mostly
suffixes) which have lost their productivity.

15 For accepting a hypothetical metathesis, it is necessary
to try to explain its causes,, in order to avoid arbitrary compari-
sons of distantly similar roots based only upon an unjustified
surmise of a spontaneous metathesis (such comparisons are not infre-
quent in special literature) .

16 In some Chadic and some other Afrasian languages (e.g.,
Egyptian) —wya—, —ay.a— is used instead of or along with — ii.a— ,

~a\a~.

17 Note that all Semitic roots of the CiC2Ci-pattern derive
from geminated C\Cz~C\Cz forms.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NOMINAL CATEGORIES IN COMMON AFRASIAN

§ 1. Gender and nominal classes

3.1.1. The Afrasian languages usually distinguish the cate-
gories of noun, adjective and numeral. The adjectives are differentia-
ted from the substantives mostly by syntactical means but also in

the formation of the plural. It seems reasonable to suppose that
at the Proto-Afrasian stage the adjective did not have a separate
existence as a part of speech.

3.1.2. In the Afrasian languages there are traces of what can
be possibly interpreted as remains of a complex system of nominal
grammatical classes which existed in prehistoric times; subsequently
they became lexicalized (fossilized in particular words) . It is like-
ly that the suffix -(a)b- served as a marker of the class of harm-
ful animals (in Cushitic and Chadic the same function was, possibly,
fulfilled by the suffix or prefix m-/u~) : Common Semitic kal-b-
'dog' ; Common Afrasian *$i‘-b- 'wolf, jackal'; Common Semitic *ca'l-
ab- 'fox' (dimin. *cu'al -) ; dab-b-, dub-b- 'bear'; * am-ab- 'hare';

Eg. db 'hippopotamus'; Common Afrasian *x(w)V'^-\\ *'Vx(w)%- 'scor-
pion' > Common Semitic ' aqr-ab -; Cush. Bilin kwsr-ad-a; Iraqw xe[j
er-ah-v 'scorpion'. The sonants -r, -l could denote the class of,
respectively, domesticated and wild useful animals: Common Sem.
*cau-r- 'bull'; ‘imm-av- 'ram'; * lih-r- 'sheep, ewe'; 'aji-al-
'deer', etc. As a matter of course, many animal names derived from
epithets do not have such markers, e.g. Sem. ‘alp- 'bull, ox; cat-
tle' which means lit. 'trained, domesticated'. Generally speaking,
the old class-indicators have left more or less clear traces only

in Semitic languages. Possibly, in this group is to be included the
element -n- (meaning obscure): Common Sem. *$a‘ -n- 'sheep and goats';
*‘113-11- 'ear' (< Afrasian *#^23- 'to hear'); Arab., Ga'az bad-(a)n-
’trunk, corpse' (< *bad) ; Common Afrasian *b^/^-n- 'interval,
space' (< Afras.. ’to enter'); Akk. tar-n- 'mast'; Chad.Ngizim

tukil-nd 'pounded fish' (Afras. *takw- 'to pound, crush'), etc. The
suffix -(a) t- which has later evolved into a mark of the feminine
gender must have also belonged originally to the nominal class-suf-
fixes .

57

3.1.3. Quite independent of the class-indicators system (that

was rather unproductive already at the Proto-Afrasian stage) there
existed a binary gender system ('old' gender markers) with the
masculine marker and the feminine marker • Since j and g

seem originally to have been allophones, it is possible that the
difference between' the two markers was that of stress (corrective
vs. extended?), later developing into a quantitative opposition:
masculine > -Vi/-Vu (or ~pV/-uV) , feminine > -a’ /~di. In Semitic
the masculine marker has left a trace only in the masculine pronoun
*su-ua, and the feminine, e.g. in some Arabic nouns in ~ai, -a.

These forms, ending in a vowel, cannot be very old because they
violate the Common Afrasian rules of syllable contacts. In Cushitic
Agaw we encounter the forms masc. — i , fem. -a; thus often also in
Chadic. In Berber we have masc. u- (v. infra) in the nominal pre-
fixes of the status cmnexus, in Omotic (Kafico) there is a nominal
suffix masc. - o , fem. -e. In Old Egyptian the ending of the mascu-
line nouns -Vu was quite well preserved in the singular; it is com-
mon in the plural (-W [*— a— jj— ] ) even after its loss in the singu-
lar; perhaps by analogy, it was introduced into fem. pi. -w-t
[-auat-]. (For another possible explanation of the last form, v.

§ 3.4.2.)

More often the feminine marker *-§ was ousted by the morph
~(a)t~ (this usually later developed into -ah > -a). It is found
almost everywhere in Afrasian, though it occurs only in a few of
the Chadic and Cushitic languages. Its secondary function as a gen-
der-marker is noticeable because of its different position, compared
with the archaic gender-indicators, inthe suffix chain [Gelb 1969].

3.1.4. While the gender distribution in the Indo-European lan-
guages is semantically obscure, in Afrasian, and more particularly,
in Semitic it is more clear: the fem. in -(a)t- is characteristic

of females (Akk. sarr- 'king' — Savr-at- 'queen'; kas&ap- 'sorcerer'—
kassap-t- 'sorceress'; Arab .sa'ir- 'poet' — sa'ir-at- 'poetess');
of nouns with singulative meaning (Arab, naml- 'ants' — naml-at-
’ (one) ant'; Hebrew ’ont 'ships' — ’ oni-a 'ship'); of diminutives
(Akk. nar-t- 'a rivulet'; often in proper names); of objects that
play a passive role in society — for instance, objects of an activi-
ty: Akk. zitt- < ^zauiz-t- 'share' (< *z}iz 'divide'); lubus-t- clo-
thing'; salam-t- 'corpse'; tarbt-t- 'offspring'; cf. Bedawye sa’
(masc.) 'cow', but sa’ (fem.) 'beef'; of abstract notions (Akk.
damiq-t- 'the good'; puluh-t- 'fear').

Some very old words denoting female beings are derived from a
different root (compared with their masculine counterparts) and
quite often lack the feminine morph: Sem. *’ab- 'father' — *’imm-
'mother'; *h-Lmar- 'donkey' — *’atan- 'a female donkey'; cf. also
Arab, hamil- 'a pregnant woman', without a feminine marker. Simi-
larly in Berber and other languages.

Under this heading can be included the names of body parts that
exist in pairs or in even numbers: Sem. *' afcn— 'eye'; *’u$n- 'ear';
*iad- 'hand'; *sinn- 'tooth'; nouns denoting places, ways, natural
phenomena (Akk. harran- 'road, path, expedition, campaign, caravan';
nar- 'river'; Ugaritic spS , Arab, sams- 'sun'; Arab, ’ard- 'earth',
cf. Akk. ' ers-et -; Hebrew '-tv 'town'). The attribution of these
nouns to the feminine gender becomes manifest only in grammatical

58

concord. There is also a residue of feminine nouns whose semantic
motivation remains obscure. Quite often they show vacillation in
gender, or their gender varies in the singular and the plural.

§ 2 . Case

3.2.1. The reconstruction of the Proto-Afrasian case system is
fraught with difficulties: in Egyptian the vowels found no repre-
sentation in writing, while the Berbero-Libyan, Chadic, Omotic and
the overwhelming majority of the Cushitic languages have been re-
corded only at the Late Stage, after having lost, for the most
part, their external inflexion.

3.2.2. Special attention must be paid to the fact that the
basic character of the Semitic nominative case is quite different
from its Indo-European counterpart, though most of the his-
torically attested Semitic languages are characterized by the no-
minative-accusative type of sentence construction. The nominative
case marker -u in the Old Semitic languages was used exclusively
to denote the subject. All other functions of the Indo-European
nominative — those of expressing the noun without precise gramma-
tical connections (e.g., in nomination, counting, address, etc.)
or the nominal predicate —were in Semitic originally carried out
by a special form with the zero marker -0 (sometimes -a). It re-
sembles the 'absolute case' in the languages with the ergative
sentence construction, i.e. languages with a leading opposition
'action vs. state', or 'transitive vs. intransitive', and where
there is no explicit direct object or accusative case. These are
languages where a special oblique ergative case marks the subject
of an action (or the subject Of a transitive verb). The subject of
the state — including the state that results from an action, i.e.
the direct object — as well as a noun with no grammatical connec-
tions, and very often the nominal predicate are in ergative langua-
ges expressed by the absolute case — usually with a zero marker. As
we shall see further on, Proto-Afrasian explicitly marked the dif-
ference between action and state. Thus, it seems reasonable to sup-
pose that the Old Semitic nominative -u had its origin in a Proto-
Afrasian case denoting the subject of action that was in opposition
with the zero case (or the case with the -a ending) . The latter at
that period not only denoted the noun outside of' grammatical links
(the so-called 'status indeterminatus ') or the noun-predicate (the
so-called 'status praedioativus ' ) , but also the subject of a state
or condition, including the subject of the state that resulted from
an action.

This is the situation that we can observe in several Cushitic
(Bedawye, Oromo, Sidamo)and Omotic (Ometo) languages; in Semitic
-a denotes the direct object (accusative), but in Old Akkadian and
in Amorite, it is, as a relic, also attested for the absolute case.
In the Semitic languages of the later periods (but still at the
Ancient Stage) the absolute case was split into the 0-case (st.
-LndetemrLnatus/praedicativus) and the direct object case (accusa-
tive) ending in -a. In Cushitic, only in the Oromo language the
case in -0/-a has the functions of the accusative. In the Omotic

59

Ome ;o language the zero case retains some connotations of the ac-
cusative; in the Cushitic Sidamo this case can also be used for che
subject of a state.

If we take into account that in Proto-Afrasian there was no
phonemic opposition between the vowels /i / and /u/, the conclusion
is that at that stage there existed a binary opposition of two so-
called 'abstract' cases characterized by the -i/-u and -0/~a mar-
kers.

3.2.3. The best preserved case — not only in the Old Semitic
languages but in quite a number of Cushitic ones — is the case with
the -i-ending. In Cushitic it functions as a 'relation case'. Often
it has two variants: a short one in — i and an 'expanded' one in

— iia, In the first instance it mostly denotes the relationship

of the attribute to the determinatum, i.e. it is semantically equi-
valent to the genitive. The second variant can have a broader
spectrum of functions. It was this 'expanded' form that developed
into the special morpheme of the relative adjectives (nisbahj in
all of the Afrasian languages; these adjectives usually denote af-
filiation. The nisbah usually takes the form -ii(a)- but, especial-
ly in some Chadic languages, it can also appear as -uyn-\ this fact
once more stresses the original identity of the case with the *-u
and the *— i endings.

The nominative (originally ergative) case in -u is attested in
Semitic alone; only Somali has -u as an allomorph of -i. On the
contrary, the nominative (or ergative) with the -i-ending is well
attested in Cushitic, e.g. in Saho, Oromo, Sidamo, and others. Such
languages have developed special morphemes for the genitive, as -u
in Sidamo, etc.

3.2.4. The preservation of the formal identity of the ergative
and the genitive in — i seems to explain the rise of the possessive
sentence construction in Egyptian. Since the subject of the action
is denoted by a case in *— i, overtly identical with the genitive,
possessive phrases can be regarded as equivalent to conjugated verb-
al forms. The person of the subject is marked by the possessive
(genitival) pronominal suffix; for the 3rd person, however, this

is true only if the sentence does not contain a noun denoting the
subject. If it does, no pronominal suffix is used at all, because
the genetival form in *— i was probably assumed by the subject-noun
itself.. But with the predicate of state (stative) , which was also
originally a nominal form with the -0/-a ending, the subject was
naturally denoted by the direct case of the pronoun, since the
'direct' case in the ergative languages is actually the absolute
case of the subject of state.

3.2.5. By the time when Proto-Semitic came into existence the
vowels /i/ and /u/ had already become phonemically distinct, and a
differentiation could take place: -u became the marker of the
subject case, and — £ of the genitive. At the same or a somewhat
later time the -0/-a case was split. Although at the oldest stages
of Old Akkadian, as well as in Amorite, the ending -a could still
denote the at. indeterminatus or praedioativus , later -0 came to
denote the absolute form, and -a was used for the object-case alone;
at an earlier stage it had denoted the subject of a state resulting
from an action. Such a situation can be presumed for the whole SCB

60

group; moreover, this situation must have obtained when the pre-
fixal conjugation developed for the predicative word (=verb) deno-
ting action (both transitive and intransitive) . At that stage the
following original 'abstract' cases can be assumed for Proto-Semit-
ic and for Cushitic:

Proto-

-Semitic

Eastern Cushitic

Nom.

-u

(Erg.) -i

Gen.

-i

—u, -i (and cithers)

Acc .
Abs .

-a'

-0

} ~0 // -a

3.2.6. Along with the 'abstract' cases denoting the subject-
object and attributive relations in the sentence, one can surmise
the existence of locative (space) markers already at the Proto-
Afrasian stage. The traces they have left are rather scanty; it is
also possible that in this category some secondary developments
have taken place, as, e.g., in Cushitic. These markers developed to
case markers from prepositions (or postpositions, depending on the
prevalent word order) .

We can assume the following cases with reasonable certainty:

-Vs, -sV: locative-terminative, dative. It is well attested as
-is in Akkadian and Amorite, as -as > -ah > -a in other West Semi-
tic languages, including Eblaite, Ugaritic, and Hebrew, as well as
in Epigraphic South Arabian. It is also abundantly attested as da-
tive or locative in some Cushitic and Omotic languages, e.g. Bilin,
Aungi (as accusative), Ometo, and others;

-dV, -Vd\ comitative, dative. It is attested in some of the
Agaw (Cushitic) languages; as a preposition — in Berbero-Libyan;

-kV: the ablative and comparative case, as evidenced by some
Cushitic and Omotic languages; is used as a preposition in Semitic;
functions as a demonstrative pronoun (and article) in several Cushi-
tic languages; in many Chadic languages, also as a demonstrative
element in the verb;

-Vm: locative-adverbialis ; in Akkadian has the form -im where
-m is an original functional part of the morph, not the mark of
mimation (i.e., the old article,, v. § 3.6). But in course of time
this -m was apocopated, just as in the case of mimation;

-l: directive (in the Cushitic Bilin, Saho) ; the Semitic 'da-
tive' and 'directive' preposition IV- (also > prefixed accusative
marker in the later Aramaic dialects), and the Egyptian preposition
n « *1-)-,

-p (also -f): ablative (in Omotic); conjunction, demonstrative
pronoun in other languages.

§ 3. Status

3.3.1. In Semitic, Berbero-Libyan and, probably, in Egyptian
the noun acquired a special nominal category, that of status. It
is an inflexional category depending on the syntactic role of the
noun. The number and the character of the statuses varies in indi-
vidual languages. They were differentiated by the structure of the

61

declensional forms and by the stem-vowels; their vocalization de-
pended on phrase stress.

3.3.2. Among the Semitic languages the status-system was most
developed in Akkadian. In this language the following statuses are
distinguished:

st. rectus, the declinable form which is assumed by a noun when
it has no substantive or pronominal attribute; but it can have an
adjective as its attribute. The noun can denote the subject (in
the -u-case) , object or circumstance (in the accusative -a-case or
in a locative case). In this status, there can also occur nominal
attributes in the — £-case, and nouns in the — £- case governed by a
preposition;

st. constructus, the construct (conjunct) form of the noun that
is determined by another noun in the genitive. Originally the st.
constructus forms could be declined; but quite early the noun lost
its case markers (among the 'abstract' cases, the genitive in -i
had been retained longer) ; it is combined with its attribute in a
single syntagm with a common dynamic stress;

st. pronominalis , the form assumed by the noun before a pronoun,
i.e. when combined with a pronominal suffix. Essentially,- it is a
variety of st. constructus, but the case endings had here been pre-
served till a later date; in the genitive the ending was always
retained, since the case marker was characterized by dynamic
stress (or, more probably, by contour accent). Perhaps, in the no-
minal forms with a long vowel in the final syllable of the stem,
the tone was shifted to the case ending before the pronoun; owing
to that, the case-endings were preserved, e.g., sarr-u, sarr-€
'king', pl.nom; and gen./acc., st.pron; sar'r^CC-su, Sar ’r-z-su
'his kings'; ftvt-u (< *hit’-u 'sin', st; pron.nom. sg. hT't-u-su,
ht't-t-su, hi’t-S-su ; sa 'du (< sadda’ -u-m) 'mountain' st. pron.nom.
sg. sad'u-su, gen. sad’t-su;

st. indeterminatus , the form when the noun functions as predi-
cate or has no grammatical links with other parts of the sentence.
It is a survival of the old absolute case in -a/-0 (the case of
the state as opposed to action) , and it usually has a zero ending.
But depending on the various functions of this status, its endings
can be slightly modified so that sometimes one can differentiate
between st. praedicativus and st. absolutus, instead of a single
st. indeterminatus.

3.3.3. In Hebrew, a language of the Middle Stage, only three
statuses are attested, because of the loss of external inflexion:

st. absolutus, corresponding to the Akkadian st. rectus and st.
praedicativus ;

st. constructus, characterized by vowel change (contraction)
and usually bearing only secondary stress;

st. pronominalis, which often preserves the original vowels of
the stem.

Ex.: st. abs. maf’Qk (< *mal’ak~) 'messenger, angel'; st.
aonstr. maV’aki st. pron. mal’Q 'k-o; st. abs. 'separ (< *sipr~)
'book'; st. constr. 'separ; st. pron. sip’r-d.

3.3.4. In Arabic three statuses have remained: (1) st. rectus
when the definite article ‘al- is absent, and the so-called nuna-
tion after the case ending is preserved; (2) st. determinatus ,

62

with the definite article, no nunation and case endings preserved;
and (3) st. constructs , never preserving the nunation. Because of
the weakness of dynamic stress in Arabic no vowel contractions take
place .

3.3.5. An entirely different system of statuses developed in

Berbero-Libyan. When functioning as attribute and' as subject of the
verb in the type of sentence where the subject follows its predi-
cate, the noun assumes the so-called 'annexed' status ( st . annexus ) .
Such a noun retains its natural gender markers, both prefixed and
suffixed, that have probably developed from an ancient type of ar-
ticle: masc. sg. u-gsllid 'king', pi. u-gallid-an, fern. sg. ip—gsl—
lid-t 'queen', pi. t3 -gollid—in (Old Lib. V-gld ,■ fern. *t-gld-t) . In
the other instances the noun is in the so-called 'free' state (st.
liber), and takes on a secondary, article-like morpheme (which,
however, has by now also lost its determining function): usually,
in the masc. sg. a-gsllid, pi. i-gsllid-an, fern. sg. ta-gsllid-t ,
pi. ti-gollid-in ; other patterns also exist. In particular, those
nouns whose initial consonant ( *h, , */2w, *u/i, *' ,■ *h) has been

lost at the Middle or the Late Stage, have a constant vocalic ini-
tial whose quality depends on the lost consonant. This vowel quali-
ty is retained both in the st. annexus and in the st. liber ; in
most cases it is identical in both numbers. The vowel of the former
secondary article has usually no influence upon this vocalic ini-
tial, and in the st. annexus the gender marker is, naturally, pla-
ced before it. Thus, in the masc. st. annexus *y.+a- > ua-, *U+i~ >
i-; *u+u- > u-, and in the st. liber a-, i~, or u-, depending on
the original consonant (*h~, h~; y.-) . The fern, nouns

of .that group in both statuses begin with t-a~, t—i-, t- u-. 1

This is the basic picture in the main North Berber languages
but there are exceptions and divergences in individual languages.

3.3.6. The Cushitic languages present complex and heterogene-
ous systems of statuses, depending on the syntactical role of the
noun. But because of the great variety of Cushitic data and lack

of sufficient study it is still difficult to reconstruct archetypes.

The category of status was present in Egyptian— the st. con-
structs, at any rate — but the. deficiencies of the system of wri-
ting hamper its study.

We should like to. note that this category must owe its appearan-
ce, to a large extent, to the development of paradigmatic tones and,
later, of’ the dynamic accent. In the pitch-accent (tone) languages,
such as Chadic and many of the Cushitic ones, the syntactical posi-
tion of the noun in the sentence often influences the pitch-contour
of a word-form, rather than provokes changes in vocalization, vowel
contraction, etc.

§ 4. Number

3.4.1. Originally, in Afrasian there were distinguished the
singular, the dual, and the plural numbers. But the dual was alive,
in historical times, only at the earliest stage: in Semitic (Old
Akkadian, Eblaite, Ugaritic, literary Arabic) , as well as in Old
Egyptian. Among the Middle Stage languages it is quite well attest-

63

ed in Hebrew; all other languages at that stage of development, as
well' as the Late Stage languages display some isolated, stray sur-
vivals; Aram, taren 'two1; Berb. Tasalhit marau—in 'twenty'; Chad.
Logone marar-en 'breasts', etc.). The dual was formed by the mor-
phemes -a- (in the 'direct) and *-£- > - a j,- (in the oblique cases),
placed after the gender marker, but before the mimation/nunation
(v. §6), if the latter was present.

3.4.2. The oldest plural marker was apparently -a- /-a- after
the gender marker, or— and quite, often — infixed before the final
consonant of the nominal stem: sg. masc. *C\VCzCi- , pi*
either *C\VCzC-$-ci -u -, or *CiVCz-a-Ci [-/ajjt] -; sg. fern. *CiVCzCi~
(a)t-, pi. *CiVCzCi-a-t-. This pattern of plural formation has been
traced in detail in various Afrasian languages by J. Greenberg
[Greenberg 1955a]. As it seems, this -a- (or, rather, *-a~) bore a
contoured accent; because of that, in some Southern Peripheral Se-
mitic languages this vowel was split into two syllables, and the
plural was formed according to the type: masc. *-dha-na (or *-ahu/i-
na) , fem. *-dha-t-u. Traces of contour-accent on the plural morph
can be seen in Akkadian: pi. fem. -a-t-u-m (i.e., -a-t-u-m?) st.
pron. -a-t-t-su. Cf. also Aram, -dyd-t-a, alternative pi. fem. to

- a-t-a ; on the origin of the Egyptian fem. pi. -wt (=[-ajjat-].?) ,
which may also belong here, see also § 3.1.3 and 3.4.3 below.

3.4.3. The system of plural formation by consistent affixation
of *-a- in its unadulterated form has not been attested in the do-
cumented languages.2 The most ancient of them. Old Egyptian and
Old Akkadian, had developed other types of plural formation that
had come about through analogy. Since the morpheme -at- was perceiv-
ed as reflecting plurality by means of lengthening the vowel of the
gender marker -at-, likewise the masc. plural in Old Akkadian began
to be formed by lengthening the vowel of the final morpheme: sg.
nom -u, gen. — £; pi. nom. -u, gen. -T. 3 ( Similar processes can be
reconstructed for the rest of Semitic) On the contrary, since the
Old Egyptian morpheme combination *-ayi- (masc. pi.), had been inter-
preted as a unitary marker of the plural, the feminine plural began
to be expressed pleonastically by the morpheme combination *-dyi-dt-
(for an alternative explanation of the form see above) ; analogous
formations occur here and there in Chadic4, Berbero-Libyan5 and in
some of the Semitic languages, for instance, in Aramaic.

3.4.4. As we shall see later on, both in singular and plural
the suffix *-m/*-n, similar to an article, could be added to the
noun (the so-called mimation/nunation). In the plural, owing to the
analogy with the other plural morphemes, this suffix was 'lengthen-
ed' to *-ma/*—na.i Having lost the determining function, and in the
course of the decline of the case system, the -m/-n after the case
ending in the singular disappeared everywhere: it was, however
often retained in the' plural, without preserving any article-like
function, but showing a shortening *-ma/*-na > -m/-n.

3. 4. -5. It must be stressed that in the dual and in the plural —
as far as we can judge by the oldest attested Semitic languages —
only two abstract cases-were always distinguished: nom. —U , gen.-
acc. —i. (This may have been a survival of a situation which ori-
ginally obtained also in the singular, v. § 3.2.2) The following
forms of the plural are attested in the texts:

64

Eg.: masc. *aii-i (?), fem. *-aj<-at— £ (?);

Akk. : masc. -H/-£ (without mimation) ; fem. -at—u-m1 ; -at— i-m;
Ugar.: masc. -di-ma/-Z-ma ; fem. -at-u/-at—i (without mimation);
Hebr.: (with lost declension): masc. — Cm; fem. -ot (without
mimation) ;

Arab.: masc. -u~na/—i-na', fem. -dt—u—n/-dt—L—n ;

Berb.-Lib. : a) Old Lib. (where declension seems to have disap-
peared) : masc. *-a-n; fem. *-dt—in (> *-ahin , *-adn.n?) 8 ;
b) Neo-Berb.: masc. -an, -3n\ fem. —in.

The same endings are attested in other Afrasian languages,
usually along with various innovations.

3.4.6. Some Afrasian languages possess a special system of
adjective plurals, e.g., in Akkadian: masc. -ut-u-m (where -ut- at
the same time functions as an abstract suffix in the singular of
the feminine nouns), fem. -at-u-m. In Arabic the old method of
plural formation is used only with adjectives and participles. In
other cases the so-called 'broken' plural is regularly used.

§ 5. ’Broken' plural

3.5.1. The 'broken' plural, or pluralis fraotus is a means of
forming the plural with the help of internal, mainly vocalic in-
flexion. It is most characteristic of Arabic where there are numer-
ous different types of such plurals, as well as of Southern Peri-
pheral and Ethio-Semitic languages. But to various degrees this
means seems to be present in all of the Afrasian branches; cf. in
Semitic: Arab, qalb- 'heart' — pi. qulub -; bahr- '.sea' — pi. ’a-
bhar -; ma-rkaz- 'center' — pi. ma-rakiz - \ the same in modern loan-
words: bank 'bank' — pi. bunuk ; gumal 'journal' — pi. $aranil; it
is much rarer in North Semitic: Akk. ’ alak-t- 'way, behaviour’ — pi.

' alkak-at -; sehr- 'small' — pi. qehher-u. In Cushitic: Bedawye fcam
'camel' — pi. kami eb'rtk 'coffee-pot' (loan-word) — pi. ’ ebrik ;

Afar eridn 'cloud' — pi. eriamo ; Saho lelle' 'day' — pi. lella'e ,
lala' ; Iraqw xa’fino 'tree' — pi. xa’i; Alagwa xa’imo 'tree' — pi.
xa’e. In Berber: a-gadir 'fortified depot, fortress' — pi. i-gudar ;
a-fus 'hand' — pi. i-fass-en ; Kabyle a-duggyal 'relative through
marriage' (< *hd-daiM.al-) — pi. i-dul-an ; ta-sir-t 'hand-mill' — pi.
ti-siar. In Chadic: Hausa ’akuia 'goat' — pi. ’ auakai ; sirdi 'saddle'—
p 1 . sivadda.

3.5.2. These forms are heterogeneous in their origin. The pos-
sibility of their existence and wide diffusion is quite understand-
able when we consider that the internal inflexion (vowel change)
has always been the most productive and habitual means of deriva-
tion and inflexion in Afrasian, though the ways and methods have
been different. One of the most important ones was the infixation
of the commonest external plural marker -a-. This phenomenon is
well known to Semitologists from the Hebrew material: kalab 'dog' <
*kalb~, pi. kslSbpn *kalab-Z-ma. Its widest extent is attested in
Berberp-Libyan .

The broken plural in Semitic has been used since the earliest
times in Southern Peripheral (and Ethio-Semitic) languages, but
only a few models have become common, mainly, of the type ’a-CiC^Cs-,
’ a~C 1C2UC3— (’a- < Proto-Semitic *sa~) .

5 287

65

The wide application of internal flexion as a means of word-
formation has resulted in the appearance — in Semitic and probably
in other Afrasian languages — of a series of noun patterns denoting
collectivity, generalization, etc.9 that are semantically parallel
to older noun patterns denoting individual phenomena. It is those
pairs that were used — especially in Arabic — to express the singul'
ar and the plural; secondary types of vocalization have in the
end almost totally ousted the original kinds of morphologically ex-
pressed plurality in the substantives. It is characteristic that be-
tween the vocalic pattern of the singular and the pattern of the
corresponding broken plural there does not seem to exist any regul-
ar correlation. The broken plural is, essentially, not a morpho-
logical but a lexical category. It is no fortuitous coincidence
that in Arabic the broken plural forms request the same agreement
as feminine forms in the singular, and that this is a characteris-
tic of abstract nouns in general.

It is impossible to establish common patterns of the broken
plural not only for Afrasian generally, but even for Proto-Semitic.
Those patterns have evidently developed for similar reasons but dif-
ferently in various languages and at various — but always relative-
ly late — times.

Thus, in Chadic we come across various forms of the plural that
originated under substratum influence, e.g., Hausa ba-haysa 'a
Hausa man', pi. hausa-ya. In Cushitic and Omotic there are other
secondary types of plural formation, probably also derived from
collective nouns and the like, but from such as were formed by
using prefixes or suffixes.

§ 6. Mimation (nunation) and the article

3.6.1. The oldest form of nominal determination by means of an
article is, evidently, the so-called mimation/nunation, i.e. the
addition of a determining pronominal element *-m/*-n (pi. *-ma/it-m.d).
This postpositional element can be added to the ending of only
'abstract' cases. Its determinative character is evident from the
fact that in Old Akkadian which fully preserves the mimation in all
other instances (except masc. pi. nouns), it is absent in the at.
vndeterminatus and often in proper names. However, already by the
end of the Old Akkadian period the mimation lost any grammatical
meaning . 10 For some time it was retained to distinguish the masc. sg.
in -u(-m) from the plurals in -U; the latter ones seem to have been
losing vowel length for reasons of phrase intonation. Though well-
trained scribes made no mistakes in the use of mimation during the
Old Babylonian period, it was only reserved in writing mostly by
way of historical orthography. Mimation in the singular disappeared
early in Ugaritic, too, and in Hebrew it vanished before the loss
of the case endings, except for the masculine plural.

3.6.2. In Classical Arabic, nunation (tanyin) was retained but
underwent a peculiar functional development. As seen from the fore-
going (3.3.4), in Arabic, a noun determined by another noun or a
pronoun, or an article, did not acquire nunation — exactly because
nunation by itself was a kind of determination, and double determi-

66

nation would have been redundant. With the gradual weakening of the
determining function of nunation, Arabic introduced a new preposed
article iL- ( < *han/l~) . It was used with such nominal forms
which were not determined by any other means — by a noun in the ge-
nitive, a pronominal possessive suffix or nunation. For this reason
nunation came to be contrasted with the new definite article and
was transformed from the definite into an indefinite article.

3.6.3. Traces of nunation/mimation — at least, in the plural —
are clear in Berbero-Libyan, more obscure in Chadic. It remains
uncertain whether it had ever existed in Cushitic and Omotic. It
was certainly missing in Egyptian.

3.6.4. Definite articles are attested in many Afrasian langua-
ges, and can be either preposed or postposed. Preposed are e.g.,
the Arabic al~, the Hebrew ha- with gemination of the following
consonant, i.e., evidently developed from *han or *hal (?) ; post-
posed is the Aramaic *-(h)a > -a; subsequently, like earlier the
nunation, the Aramaic article lost its determining function and,
after the loss of the category of status in Aramaic, it became a
universal means of noun-formation. All these articles derive from
the demonstrative pronouns *ha, *hann~, *kV and the like.

Egyptian produced its own article at an early stage from the
demonstrative pronouns *pV, *tV, *nV. In Berbero-Libyan, articles
appeared at two consecutive periods, but already by the time of
Old Libyan both the earlier and the later articles had lost their
determining function and were retained — as we have seen — only as
status markers. However, they are still retained as separate words
masc. ua, fem. ta, in the Tuareg group. In Cushitic, Omotic and Chadic,
articles are very rare. However, they are present in Bedawye (where
they are identical with the oldest Berbero-Libyan ones surviving in
the st. annexus') , in Somali (kV~) , in Sidamo (- hV < -kV-) , etc.

§ 7. Numerals

3.7.1. A common Afrasian system of numerals cannot be recon-
structed. Most widely occurring stems are *fVdS, *-fVrS (where the
final "weak" sonant is unclear) meaning 'four', and *dVn 'two': Se-
mitic *6in- > *tin~, Berbero-Libyan sin and Egyptian sn. But in
Cushitic this root has the meaning 'likeness, like' (Bilin sana) or
'twins' (Iraqw dahgi ?) .

Some numerals still retain traces of the original semantics
deriving from counting on fingers, e.g., the Common Cushitic and
Common Omotic *lam' - 'two' (<. 'index-finger')11; Eg. dy 'five'

(< 'pertaining to hand'); Sem. hams- 'five', originally '*handful,
compact group', cf. Akk. hamasu (< *hms) 'to flex, crook hand or
foot'; Arab, hamis- 'group, troop'. Here also belongs Berb.-Lib.
summus 'five' where the anlaut was changed to alliterate with *sids
'six' (a rather frequent phenomenon in the history of numerals, cf.
Slavonic *deventi < *newen- 'nine' like *desenti 'ten'); further.
Eg. md 'ten' ~ Sem. ma’d 'many'. Other numerals of the first decade
might have originated from specific names of individual fingers.

3.7.2. In the great majority of cases each branch (family) of
Afrasian developed its own system of numerals, and their etymolo-

5-2 287

67

gies remain obscure. Borrowing of numerals occur quite often; thus,
many of the Berber languages have partly or completely adopted the
Arabic numerals. The systems of numerals are decimal everywhere.

3.7.3. Anomalies in the concord of numerals are frequent; for
instance, the feminine form of a numeral agrees with the masculine
form of a countable noun; certain groups of numerals agree with
the object counted as adjectives, other groups as genitival
attributes, and still others as attributive apposition. Quite
often with a numeral a noun in the singular is used.

§ 8. Prepositions and Postpositions

3.8.1. We discuss prepositions together with the nouns since
originally all of them belonged to the category of nouns; partly,
perhaps, to verbal nouns.

3.8.2. It is usual to subdivide Semitic and Egyptian preposi-
tions into primary ones, of obscure etymology and used proclitical-
ly, and secondary ones, whose nominal origin is more or less clear.
But in fact, 'primary1 prepositions also derive from nominal forms.
Thus, the common Semitic preposition *bV- 'in' (absent only from
Akkadian and Eblaite) has its origin in Proto-Afrasian *by- 'a place;
to enter'. In Eblaite, and in some Old Akkadian surviving forms, a
few prepositions preserve traces of declension: 'in 'in' - * in-a
'to'; * a6t-u, ' aSt-a 'from' — ' ast-i 'with'. In Egyptian, possess-
ive adjecatives (nisbahs) could be formed on the basis of preposi-
tions, e.g., n and n-y.

Finally, the nominal nature of the prepositions is apparent
from the fact that all prepositions in Semitic and, perhaps, in
Egyptian, govern the nominal genitive, that is, they form an attrib-
utive syntagm together with the noun they govern. In Old Akkadian
the instances when a preposition requests a locative case are very
rare and ought to be considered pleonastic.

3.8.3. Along with prepositions, postpositions also exist in
Afrasian languages. They occur mostly in Chadic, Cushitic, and
Omotic, and must be connected with the difference in the word
order.

It has not been possible to discover prepositions common in
that quality to all the Afrasian languages: they must have come
into existence rather late, at the level of branches (or families).
The earlier postpositions develop into case-forms. Cf. § 3.2.6.

REFERENCES

1 The accusative could also denote the object of the verbs of
movement, i.e., it could be used in a locative (and temporal) func-
tion.

2 In Cushitic and Chadic of the Late Stage this characteristic
formation has been altered by phonetic processes to such an extent
as to become quite unrecognizable: Cush. Somali pi. fem. -o(d) ;
Chad. Bade pi. fem. -t, -et, and many others; possibly, cf. Hausa
hanj,a '.road', tuta' banner', pi. hanj,-oci , tut-ooi (?) .

68

3 However, one could also regard Akkadian (but not, e.g. Hebrew
or Arabic) pi. masc. -u, — t as having developed < *-a-u, *-a-i. Such
a form can anyway be reconstructed for Old Aramaic: pi. masc. St.
constructus -e, st. determinatus • -ail'd. (< *-ai, *-ai-M) , but et.
pronominalie -o-ht < *-ayi-hi ; the two cases of the plural -ay and
-ai are preserved in the 1st millennium B.C. Para-Aramaic dialect
Ya’udx in North Syria.

4 The Chadic plurals in -a (< *-a) , -a: Hausa iavo 'boy',
ma-keri 'smith' - pi. iara, ma-kera. Similarly in Cushitic (e.g.,
in Bedawye) . In some cases, however, we may suspect that a final
consonant was lost.

5 According to A. Basset, the Berbero-Libyan pi. masc. ending
-(a)^an, fem. ~(a)\j.in had been originally used exclusively with
nouns with a final -u of the stem: a-maksa < *a-maksayi 'herdsman',
ta-maksaii-t 'shepherdess', pi. i-maksau-an, ti-maksau—in ; but later
they were expanded to other derivational types.

6 In terns of evolution, the development was, probably, in the
reverse direction: by functioning as" an article, the enclitic suf-
fixed demonstrative pronoun ma was shortened in the sing. to *-m/

*-n.

7 In Akkadian there occurs the formof masc. pi. -an-u which orig-
inally had been used as the plural of concrete units and only lat-
er became an allomorph of the usual plural marker. The endings
-aw. (masc., Berber), -an (masc., Cush. Bedawye), -n (masc., Chad.
Bade), etc., can be interpreted as the same morph, or as an old
plural in -5 plus nunation. The same is the case with one of the many
forms of the plural in Arabic: ’ asuad- 'black', pi. Sudan 'the
(land of the) blacks; Sudan'.

8 In Old Libyan the ending of fem. pi. -tn was probably voca-
lized as -atin. A masculine (!) plural -tin is preserved in some
Late Stage dialects.

9 Some patterns of the broken plural obviously derive from
such nouns; e.g., the pattern C\aCzaCi-t- in Akkadian denotes an
abstraction: tqib-t- 'goodness', yabar-t- 'a foreign trade-colony';
cf. in Go'az nagas-t-, pi. of nagus 'king'. Pattern C\iCzdC 3-
conveys plurality: Arab, kitab- 'written signs, text', hence 'book',

but cf. kilab pi. of kalb- 'dog'. Pattern *sa-C\CzdCz~ denotes

the possession of a quality, usually in the highest degree: Akk.
sa-psaq- 'greatest difficulty', Sa-rbab- 'loss of strength, paralys-
is', Sa-lbab- 'anger, angry'; in Arabic ’a-bhar- pi. of bah?-

' sea' .

10 Akkadian never developed an alternative article, as did
most of the other Semitic languages; this might be due to the fact
that there was no article in the substratum.

11 Note Aungi land 'finger, hand; two'; Be<}awye lumi 'finger';
Oromo e-lema (prefixed?) 'index finger'; in most of the other Cu-
shitic languages the word means 'two'.

5-3 287

CHAPTER FOUR

PRONOUNS

§ 1. Personal pronouns

4.1.1. Personal pronouns in Afrasian can be classified into
subject, possessive, and object pronouns (there also exist oblique-
object pronouns). All of them can be independent or enclitic (suf-
fixed) . In most Afrasian languages the pronominal stems have a
common origin.

4.1.2. The independent personal pronouns in the direct (absolu-
te) case may be introduced by a special demonstrative element: Sem.
'an-. Eg. in- and nt-, Berb. n-, nt-, Cush, an, a-.1 In Chadic,
there is extensive prefixation of demonstrative elements to the
independent personal pronouns, e.g., in Western Chadic Karekare:
d(V)~, in the Angas-Sura group: mV-/wV-/gV-\ in Central Chadic
Musgu: tV-. The demonstrative element can be suffixed as well, but
it can also be completely absent.

The nominative form of the independent pronouns does not fun-
ction as the subject of a sentence; the subject is rendered by a
pronominal prefix or suffix of the verb. The independent nomina-
tive case is used rather for purposes of emphasis or singling out:
'it is I that...', 'I, for my part...', 'as far as I am concerned',
etc .

4.1.3. The independent, as well as other personal pronouns
distinguish number (singular, dual2, and plural) and person (1st
and 2nd) . The 2nd person pronouns have separate gender forms —
masculine and feminine. For the 3rd person a demonstrative pronoun
is always used; in Semitic, Berbero-Libyan, and Egyptian the lat-
ter is derived from the common stem *suu(a) (masc.), *si%(a) (fem.)
(see. Table 1) .

Some Cushitic and Chadic languages retain archaic forms of
inclusive Cwe, i.e. you and myself’) and exclusive pronouns ('we.

70

but not you'); the stem of the former can be reconstructed as
*hVnV ; of • the latter — as *nV. The Semitic 1st. p. pi. combines both
stems (*naknV) ■

4.1.4. Possessive, object and oblique-object independent
pronouns have been preserved as a coherent system in Akkadian ; in
some Afrasian languages of the Late Stage these categories are
obviously of secondary origin.

4.1.5. Essential for the understanding of the original Afra-
sian language structure in general are the Egyptian independent
pronouns. In the classical Middle Egyptian there are two sets of
independent pronouns — 'free' and 'subordinate', and one set of
suffixed pronouns:

Sg.

Free

Subordinate

Suffixed

p-

In-k

W

-J

([-ia])

p-

m.

nt-k

ku, later tw

-k

([-ka])

(* [cuwa] )

f.

nt-t

tm, later tn

-t

( [-ci] < *-ki)

('[-*(] < *-ki)

(*[cima, cina])

p.

m.

nt-f

SU (,< *[suua])

- f

([-fu])

( [-f] < *hu < *su )

f .

nt-s

sj3 (< * [siia] )

-s

( [~si])

PI,

p.

3

vn-n

n ( [na] ?)

-n

C[-nV])

p-

nt-tn ( [-cin] )

tn(-w)

-tn

: ( [-di/unv] )

(* [di/unv] )

p.

nt-sn

STl (~W? )

, . r . . -\ .

- sn

: ( [-si/unv] )

(* [si/unV] )

The functional differences among them are as follows: the suf-
fixed pronoun was originally a possessive (genitival) form denoting
possession or appurtenance, and also served as the subject in the
majority of verbal forms. The 'free' pronoun was at first a form of
the direct (absolute) case, and its function was to emphasize the
subject of a nominal predicate4; the 'subordinate' pronoun, histo-
rically speaking, was also a form of the direct (absolute) case,
and so expressed the subject of the ' qualitative-stative' form; the
latter is an intransitive, a 'stative', and, most likely, an origi-
nally nominal form. In some cases this pronoun could also denote
the subject of the overtly nominal predicate. When the predicate
has the meaning of 'action' — as is usual for the ergative-type lan-
guages — the same pronoun denotes the direct object, since the lat-
ter was originally perceived as the subject of a state resulting
from an action. Besides that, the subordinate pronoun could also
express the 'logical' subject in infinitive and adverbial phrases.

5-4 287

71

INDEPENDENT PERSONAL PRONOUNS
OF THE DIRECT CASE

Language

Number\.

Person

Gender

Semitic

(reconstructed)

Egyptian
( free
pronouns)

Berber

(Tasalhit)

Singular

1st person

*’an-Sku, *’an-<i, *'an-z

>. .

^n-k

nki

o , rmasc.

2nd person {

*’ an-ta (< *,an-ka?)
*’an-ti (< *aan-ki)

nt-k

nt-t (/-$/)

kii

kimi

masc.

3nd person ■{

fem.

*£uu-

nt-f

( < *—su—)
nt-s

nt-a/B

nt-a-t

Plural

1st person

*na-1}na/u, *' ana-hna/u

i.

nkunna

(*.p.

nkanti )

0 j rmasc.

2nd person |

*’ an-timu (< *’ an-kumu?)
*’ an-tina (< *’ an -kina)

i nt-tn

1 (7-Sn/)

kunna

kunamti

\ nt-sn

nit-ni

nit-anti

1 The presented are the most archaic forms.

2 Chadic pronouns of the other groups (East, Central Chadic)
somewhat resemble Omotic pronouns; both have formed during a long
evolutionary process rooted in the proto-language. Some of the
pronouns in question have developed from conjugated verbal forms

72

Table 1

Cushitic1

Chadic2

West Chadic

Bedawye

Somali

(Hausa) (Angas)

an'C

ana , anu

ni

gnan (< *g(n)-ani ?)3

( newly-deve loped
forms)

ada, ad-C (< *ata ,
*at{)

kai

ke

g-hd (< *g-ka/g-kwa)
i ji (< *g-kwi-? )

II

u (nsa-, Isa-)

ai ( iiia-)

m

\f ,

nyZ (from a dif-
} ferent indicative
pronoun)

anna(-ga)
(exclusive)
inna (- ga )
(exclusive)

mu

rrrun

(newly-developed

forms)

} ai-din-ga

ku

wun (< *kPun?)

II

um

su

ma

of the 'to be' type. Cf., however, the Omotic plural personal
pronouns: nu, (in)no of the 1st person, inte/o of the 2nd person.

3 The initial g- is possibly derived from the indicative particle
*gU- or *£_ also attested in Cushitic pronouns; cf . Semitic
( ’an-) .

73

SUFFIXED OBJECT PRONOUNS

Language

Number v

Person

Cender

Semitic

(Akkadian)

Cushitic

( Bed awry e)

Singular

1st person

-ni

-he-b-a (fem. -he-b— i)

0 j r masc.

2nd person { ^

-ka

-ki

-ho-ka

-Ho-ki

0 j r masc.

3nd person {

~su

-si

-ho-s

-hd-s

Plural

1st person

-ni’Zit(i) 1 * 3

-hd-n

masc.

2nd person {

fem.

*-kumu > -kunu
-kuriut ( i)
*-kinat ( i)

-ho-kna

-ho-kna

masc.

3nd person {

fem.

*-swnu > -sunu
-sunuti3
-sinat(i) 3

-hd-sna

-hd-sna

1 Originally, this must have been an object marker, the

pronoun base proper (*-s > *-h?) having not been retained.

3 In these languages object pronouns are not suffixed.

All Semitic languages, other than Akkadian and Eblaitic,

74

Table 2

Berber

" 1 1 1

Chad i c

(Ta^alhit)

(Hausa) 2

(Musgum)

(Logone)

(Mubi)2

n't

. “5

-'an, ~'n

ni

mgm

ka

-ku, -ku

ka

I mm

ki

i

-kam

ki

- 1 1

< *si

~n%y -nty' ~ni

ar

-s-t

ta 1

tv 1

-

~(n)a

mu

-yi

-mu

an

-kun

} ku

} -k-i(ni)

} -kun

} kan

-kun-t

-ten1

} su

} -di 1

} -tan1

} ke(r)

,-tsn-t 1

have lost the marker -t-, - ti , by analogy with the singular, or
have retained only its traces (like Phoenician and Ge'ez), Oblique
object pronouns are formed in Akkadian after the pattern su'as(i),
sunus(i), etc.

75

SUFFIXED POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS

Language

Number v's.

Person

Gender

Semitic

(reconstr.)

Cushitic

(Be^awye) 1 2

Berber

(Tasalhit)

Singular

1st person

-ii-0

-iy -n-i

n , rmasc.

2nd person t f

*-ka

*-ki

-u-ka ( < *-kwa)
-ii-kC

0 , rmasc.

3rd person {

*-su

*-8i

-u-s

-us

Plural

1st person

*-na/u/i

- u~n

-una, - n-na , -t-na

~ . rmasc.

2nd person {

*-kumu

*-kina

-u-kna.

-u-kna

-un, -nn-un, -t-un
-um-t, -nnam-t,
-t-um-t, (-n-kun-t)

0 , r mas c •

3rd person |

-u-sna

-u-sna

-san, - n-sen , -t-san
-san-t, -n-san-t,
-t-san-t

1 Of the very variable Cushitic forms only the most archaic
are presented.

2 In Buduma the 2nd person distinguishes between masculine
-(u)gu and feminine -yum.

76

TabVe 3

Egyptian

Chadic

Western

(Hausa)

Central

Eastern

(Musgum)

(Logone)

(Mubi)3

masc.

fem.

masc.

fem.

-</

-na

-a

-a- u

H

-ji

-k

-t ([-S'])

-ka

-ki

} -ku

} -a-ku

-i na-kuz

-da

. /

-3^

~da y
-ji-ge

-f (< *-sw)

-s

-sa

-ta

-n-i
- n-ita

-a-ni
/ .
-a-v

-na-ni

-na-i

'-a-t

-31

-d-i

-i

-n

- mu

-ti

-anany

-amu1*

-na-mu

common gender

-jl^ne

} -ku

} -ki

} -akun

} -na-kun

} -jit-gum

} -sn

} -su

} - nagai

} -a-tsn

} -na-tan

m

3 In many East Chadic languages the deviations from the Afrasian
prototype are still more marked.

** In Buduma this pronoun is of common gender; -mu is inclusive,

-n(a)i is exclusive.

77

In the grammars of Egyptian it is usually stated that the func-
tion of the predicate — or, more properly, of specifying the person
of the predicate — is fulfilled only by the suffixed pronoun. How-
ever, for the nominal (participial) sentence two parallel construc-
tions are established: they are considered to be identical in
meaning, though stylistically different: nfv '(this is) I (who

is) good'; ink s'd gr-t-f '(this is) T. (who has) cut his trunk'; but
h' sw 'joyous he (is)'. In the first two examples the pronoun is
'free', but in the third it is 'subordinate'. Both are considered
to be expressing the subject of the nominal predicate. But comparis-
on with Semitic constructions makes it apparent that the pronoun in
the direct cases can denote both the subject and the predicate: Akk.
ha’iv atta '(it's) you (who are) the husband' (the personal pronoun
denotes the subject); annu su 'this (one here) is he' (the personal
pronoun denotes the predicate) . But the independent pronoun with
the emphasizing particle could not express the person of the pre-
dicate. This is the pronoun that corresponds to the Egyptian 'free'
pronoun of the tn-, n-t- series. There is not preserved in Semitic
any direct correspondence to the Egyptian independent 'subordinate'
pronoun. But, if the forms *‘anaku, *’anta, *’anti, *suua, * siia
denote only the emphatical subject, their 'subordinate' counter-
parts -(a)ku, ~(a)ta, -(a)ti are suffixed personal markers both of
the stative predicate and the nominal predicate: labs-aku 'I am
dressed'; ha’ir-ata 'you are (a) husband'. Moreover, the personal
pronoun su 'he' was used in the Semitic of the Middle Stage as a
predicative copula even with the 1st or 2nd person nominal predicate:
Akk. * aim' a sU 'you are my brother-he' ; Hebr. ’attain haloVe havbt
Hernia 'you (pi.) are struck by ('of') my sword-they' . The same pro-
cess evidently took place in Egyptian, and so in the phrase tnk nfv
the 'free' pronoun in fact emphasizes the subject of the nominal
sentence ('it is I who is good'), yet in the phrase sw the 'sub-
ordinate' pronoun was originally the predicative copula ('he is
joyou#), irrespective of how it was perceived by later speakers.

4.1.6. From the Proto-Afrasian point of view the Egyptian ' free'
and 'subordinate' pronouns are really one. The usual form of the
personal pronoun in the direct case is in Egyptian the 'subordinate'
one. (The 1st p. sg. of this pronoun still needs clarification: is
it a borrowing from the dual?). The 'free' pronoun was originally
an emphasized form in the direct case plus the stressed demonstra-
tive prefix in-, nt-5 ; so the stem of the personal pronoun itself
was consequently subjected to contraction. Quite analogous are the
Semitic pronouns ’ anaku, ’anta, etc.

4.1.7. It is necessary to discuss in detail yet another archaic
pronominal series in Egyptian which also has parallels in Semitic:

Eg-

masc.

awt

(*

cu(jj)ati

fem.

amt

(*■

cimati )

masc.

swt

(*

su(y)ati

fem.

stt

(*

sitati )

)

)

Akk. (Assyrian dialect)
ku(u)ati

ku(%)ati (but cf. Berb. kirn)

su’ati

si’ati

78

In the Old Assyrian dialect of Akkadian these forms are independ-
ent personal pronouns of the common oblique case. In the Babylonian
dialect they express the object in the accusative or the genitive.

In Eblaite and in Babylonian the independent personal pronouns in
the dative are formed on similar lines (with the element -s- instead
of ~t~ ; there are Cushi'tic parallels) . In Old Egyptian these forms
had already lost their declensional character and'were in free varia-
tion with the 'free1 pronouns (in the direct case). Then they rapid-
ly fell into disuse. Proto-Egyptian seems to have had no special
way of . expressing the direct object of the verb as distinct from the
subject of a state (resulting from an action), and thus did not need
independent personal pronouns expressing the direct object. It is
probable that these pronouns. had originally been used — just as in
Old Assyrian — for the common oblique case (including the genitive-
ergative) .

The oblique cases of the personal pronouns were expressed
through prepositions in the earliest Old Egyptian, and thus the
independent personal pronouns of the oblique cases died out early.
Only the usual 'free' and 'subordinate' pronouns (in the direct
case) and the suffixed (possessive) ones survived. This is import-
ant for the study of the Egyptian grammar and of the Egyptian lan-
guage’s place among the other Afrasian languages.

It must be stressed that the direct case personal pronoun can-
not denote the subject of a verbal predicate, with the exception
of the ' qualitative-stative' form (the 'pseudo-participle', or
stative) . Otherwise this function is fulfilled only by the suffix-
ed pronouns. These latter ones are generally used to denote: (1)
possessivity6 , and (2) the subject of the verbal predicate (except
the 'qualitative-stative' form). Thus, it is obvious that suffixed
pronouns were originally forms of an oblique, namely, of the ge-
nitive case.

In other words, in Egyptian the direct case was the proper form
for the subject of a nominal predicate and the 'qualitative-stative*
form (originally nominal), and for the direct object of an action
(as the subject of state resulting from an action). The subject of
the verbs of action (including, at first, transitive and intransi-
tive action verbs, and, later, all those intransitive verbs that
did not denote quality or state) was put in an oblique, namely, in
the genitive case. Putting it differently, in Egyptian the dominant
construction was not nominative, but possessive, which is a variety
of the ergative construction.7

4.1.8. In the other Afrasian languages the personal pronouns in
the direct case — usually also emphasizing the subject and the pre-
dicate — are often structurally similar to the Egyptian 'free' pro-
noun. They are also introduced by a special demonstrative particle
'an- (in the 1st and 2nd prs.); in Berber, in some cases, this'
particle has the form nt-, identical with the Egyptian one. But in
other instances in Berbero-Libyan direct case such pronouns are used
that formally correspond to the Egyptian 'subordinate' forms.

Oblique cases are formed with the help of connective elements of
prepositional origin.

79

§ 2. Personal markers in the verb

4.2.1. In Semitology it is usual to distinguish between the per-
sonal (subject) markers of the verb, considered to be its components,
and the suffixed possessive, objectival and oblique-obj ectival pro-
nouns. Suffixed possessive pronouns are used with nouns or with
(noun-derived) prepositions as their attributes. The objectival suf-
fixed pronouns are used with verbs, but are not considered to be
components of the verbal form. This view is based on the fact that
a conjugated verbal form — at least, in the 1st and 2nd prs. — can-
not exist without personal subject markers8, while such verbal forms
need not have a nominal object marker; a fortiori, this applies to
the pronominal markers of the indirect object. But the personal
subject indicators in the verb are pronominal in origin, and since
we are primarily 'concerned with problems of origin, it is reasonable
to treat them here like other pronominal elements. Then we can
distinguish in Afrasian affixed pronouns the following five clas-
ses: (1) prefixed (prefixed-suf fixed) personal subject pronouns
used with verbs; (2) suffixed personal subject pronouns (=direct
case pronouns) ; (3) suffixed possessive pronouns (= genitival pro-
nouns) ; (4) suffixed objectival pronouns; (5) suffixed pronouns of
the indirect object (= dative case pronouns).

(1) Prefixed personal pronouns, used with the verb and expres-
sing the subject of action, are absent in Egyptian; according to
Newman and Schuh [Newman — Schuh 1974], they do not exist in Chadic
either. This must be due to the existence, in the languages in ques-
tion, of a possessive verbal construction, where the personal
subject of a verbal form was expressed by an affixed possessive
pronoun (v. infra).

The other languages9 have. the following forms of the prefixed-
suf fixed personal subject pronouns.

sg.

Semitic

(reconstructed)

Berber

(Tasalhit)

Cushitic
(Bedawye, 'old
conj ugation)

1 St

P.

, b

’a-

0-. ..-ayC

a-

2nd

_ J

masc.

ta- ...

t-. . . -t

te-. . . -a

P' l

fem.

ta-. .

t-. . . -t

te-. . . — i

3rd

P- {

masc.

fem.

ia~- • • d

J^a . . . / ta-. . .

i~. • • ,

i-/t~...d

*(i)i~, e-. .

ti-. . .

PI.

1st

P-

na-. . .

n~. . .

ni-. . .

2nd

n f

masc.

ta-:. . -u

t-. . . - m

te- -na

P" 1

fem.

ta-. . . -71 /-na

t-. . . -m-t

te-. . . - na

3rd

n 1

masc.

ia-. . . -m

0-. . . -n

(e) -. . . -na

P • 1

fem.

ta-/ia~. . . -a/-na

0-. . .-n-t

(e)-. . . -na

k Very similar in Saho, 'Afar, Somali, and some Agaw languages.
With variants ’i- — , ti- ; ii~. . . , etc., according to de-

finite rules of apophony.10

80

c Since the original initial *’a- tended to disappear in Berber,
in this case the marker has been transferred from another conjuga-
tion type — the suffixal conjugation of the predicative stative
(*-akV, > *-akkV > *~ak > -ay).

** There is vacillation in some languages between the ■ia- and
the ta- elements for the 3 sg fern. The ta- element is used when the
subject is a female being; the £a- element corresponds to a noun
only grammatically feminine; thus in Berber (Ta^elhit) , in the Old
Assyrian dialect of Akkadian, etc.

(2) the suffixed personal pronouns in the direct case are gene-
rally distinguished from the independent direct case personal pro-
nouns by the absence of the demonstrative element ’an- (et al.);
they are enclitic variants of the direct case pronouns and similar
to the Egyptian 'subordinate' pronoun (cf. Table 4). Attested in
Semitic, the Berber languages Kabyle, Aujila, etc. , Egyptian, Eastern
Chadic Mubi.11 They can be reconstructed in the auxiliary verb
of some Cushitic languages. That verb could enter into concatena-
tion with a noun (or verbal noun) — usually with its stem, — and
the resulting form would preserve the meaning carried by the stem,
while the auxiliary verb together with its affixed personal pronoun
served as a new type of suffixal conjugation. 12 The predicate cont-
aining suffixed personal pronouns originally expressed a state that
had been achieved and was continuing. On further development see
Chapter Five.

(3) the suffixed possessive pronouns are joined to the stem
either directly, or by means of a genitival particle: in Berber
-n-(-t-) , in Bedawye ~(£)u~, and others (cf. Table 2).

(4) the suffixed pronouns expressing the direct object are not
found in Egyptian. In many Afrasian languages, such as Bedawye,
they are introduced by a special particle, (cf. Table 3).

(5) pronominal dative suffixes are attested in Akkadian at the
Ancient stage and in the Berber languages. In Akkadian they are
characterized by an element -m (a marker of direction of the action)
in the plural forms there is present the dative case marker -s,
joined to the same stems. Similar forms are found in some Cushitic
languages.

(6) Of particular importance is the fact that the prefixed mar-
kers of the acting person (in the verb) bear no likeness either to
the direct case pronouns, or to the objectival or possessive pro-
nouns. Special attention must be paid to the prefix ’a- of the

1st p. and -La— of the 3rd p. (only the former has an analogous
counterpart in the pronoun of the 1st p. dative in Akkadian: -a-m) .
It seems probable that they reflect an ancient oblique case,
not the direct (absolute) one. But that oblique case was not the
accusative or the genitive, but some other. Taking into account all
that has been said above about the origin of the Semitic nominative
we should interpret it as the oblique case of the subject of action
i.e., the ergative case (cf. infra, the discussion on the structure
of the verb) . This corroborates the view that the dominant sentence
structure in Proto-Afrasian was ergatival. Only in Egyptian (and,
originally, in Chadic?) it was replaced by the very similar posses-
sive construction.

6 287

81

Some peculiarities of the personal pronouns can be explained by
the evolution of the verbal structure. The attributive construction,
as distinguished from the predicative one, has not gone through any
essential changes, and thus the system of possessive pronouns in all
the branches is almost identical.

§ 3. The nota gen.iti.vi

4.3.1. In Afrasian, besides the usual attributive phrase (the
determinatum in the st. eonstructus — the attribute in the genitive:
Old Akk. y.arad sarr-i-m ' king’s slave'; Aram, kasap malk-a 'king’s
silver'), another, descriptive, attributive phrase is also used, on
the pattern: 'the slave who is of the king' or 'the slave that-one
of the king'. The determinatum (1) is in the st. rectus or — when
the declension is lost — in the st. absolutus ; there follows (2) a
pronoun, the so-called nota genitivi, or izafat , and then (3) the
attribute in the genitive, e.g.: Old Akk yard-u-m £u sarr-i-m
'(the) slave who (is the) king’s'; Aram, kasp-a di matk-a 'the
silver which (of) the-king' ; Hausa asaZi—n hausa-wa '(the) origine-
which (of-the) Hausa' .

The function of the nota genitivi is usually fulfilled by a
demonstrative-relative pronoun that is not identical with the 3rd
person pronoun (which is, of course, also originally demonstrative).
Semitic has a nota genitivi from the stem *s-j| *c-|[ *£- (> d- > d-
or z-; Akk. *c- > s-, in the traditional notation). In Old Akkadian
the nota genitivi still varied according to gender and person. Egyp-
tian, Chadic and Berber use the stem n— , and the gender is usually
differentiated (fern, n-t > t) ; and in Egyptian it could even pro-
duce a relative adjective (nisbah) n-y , n-y-t. At the same time the
Egyptian nota genitivi could function as a preposition; this seems
to be a result of contamination with, the old Afrasian preposition
ZV— that was preserved in most Semitic languages: n- is a regular
phonetic reflex of *Z- in Egyptian. In Berbero-Libyan and in Chadic
a role similar to that of the nota genitivi is played by the comita-
tive pre- or postposition, or conjunction -d, d- ('with, and')
which has survived also in Cushitic as a case marker.

4.3.2. Sometimes the independent possessive pronouns can be
produced by the combination of the nota genitivi with a suffixed
possessive pronoun. Thus, in Hausa (Chadic):

The possessed object

masc.

fem.

1 st

P*

na-ua

ta-ya

2nd

masc.

na-ka

ta-ka

P-t

fem.

na-ki

ta-ki

3rd

n 1

masc.

na-sa

ta-sa

P-1

1 fem.

na-ta

ta-ta

1 st

P-

na-mu

ta-mu

2nd

P-

na-ku(m)

ta-ku (m)

3rd

P-

na-su(m)

ta-su(m)

82

4.3.3. Apparently, the same deictic element that had been used
for the nota genitivi, was also used for the demonstrative prefix
in the personal 'free' pronouns, at least, in Egyptian and Berbero-
Libyan.

§ 4. Deictic and other pronouns

4.4.1. Along with the demonstrative pronouns that later develop-
ed into the personal pronouns of the 3rd prs. and the nota genitivi,
there are many other pronominal stems in Afrasian that express
various deictic degrees. Only a small part of them can be of Proto-
Afrasian origin. One may note the pronoun for the proximate deixis;
it can be linked with the article Sem. ha(n)-, (h)Vl-; Eg. p-,
Cush. k(w)~, b~, and others. The degrees of deixis can also be dif-
ferentiated with the help of possessive pronouns, e.g., Arab, da-
li-ka 'this', lit. ' that-to-thee' ; Aram, dp-rid 'this', lit. ' this-
ours' ; dek 'that', lit. ' this-thine' ; Eg. p-f 'that', lit. 'this-
his' .

4.4.2. The Common Afrasian demonstrative stem m- was used for
the deixis of the distant and the distant-and-invisible object. In
the historically attested Afrasian languages from this element not
only the mimation/nunation and the nominal morph mV- have been
derived, but also interrogative (and indefinite) pronouns, for
example, in Semitic: Akk. man(n)- 'who?', min- 'what?'; Hebr. mt
'who?'; ma 'what?'; Aram., Arab, man 'who?', ma 'what?'; in Cushi-
tic (Somali): ma — interrogative particle, ma-hei 'what?'; Berbero-
Libyan (Ahaggar) : mi(-t) 'who', ma(-t) 'what?'; Eg.: m 'what?
who?'; Chadic (Hausa) : me- (with the copula) 'what?'.

4.4.3. Demonstrative pronouns of the distant-and-invisible
deixis sometimes evolved — according to A. P. Rif tin — into negative
and prohibitive particles, as, e.g., Arab. ma. The origin of other
negative particles which are quite abundant in Afrasian, remains
still obscure.

4.4.4. While the majority of the interrogative pronouns are
derived from the *m stem, there is another stem, producing inter-
rogative pronominal adjectives ('which', 'what'), i.e. *’aiiV~. It
is extensively represented in Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic.

4.4.5. Pronominal stems are also at the origin of various pro-
nominal adverbs.

REFERENCES

1 In Cushitic, and particularly in Omotic, pronouns have often
undergone considerable changes, both phonetical and structural. In
some cases the independent personal pronouns seem to have originat-
ed in an archaic finite form of the verbum substantivum. Chadic pro-
nouns require further study.

2 For simplicity's sake we omit the pronouns of the dual number
from further discussion. They became extinct everywhere at a very
early period.

6-2 287

83

3 Also there occurs a pronoun s-t, where -t is an element often
met with in oblique cases of the pronouns in the Afrasian languages.

“* With the verbal form s$m-f (when denoting the momentary
aspect in the future tense) the 'free' pronoun could also be used
to emphasize the subject of the action which was already expressed
by the verbal form. This phenomenon is obviously late.

5 The same particle is frequently used to introduce the subject
of the participial and verbal predicate.

6 Under this heading comes also the expression of the logical
object of the infinitives of transitive verbs, as well as the logical
subject of the infinitives of intransitive verbs.

7 This feature of Egyptian was for the first time observed by
M.E.Matthieu (Matye) .

8 But, in the Egyptian verbal form s$m-f the suffixed subject
marker is not obligatory if this subject is expressed inside the
sentence by a nqun. Similarly in some Chadic languages.

9 Many Cushitic languages have developed a new type of a prefix-
al conjugation that coexists with, or has ousted, the older type,

on which v. infra. Chapter Five.

10 According to R.Hetzron [Hetzron 1973/74], the original vo-
calization of the prefixes is that in Akkadian: *’a~, *ta~, *ii-( '!),
*ta~, *ni~, etc. In the other Semitic languages there has been
some form of levelling. As I see it, the vowel, if stressed, is

£- when the stem vowel is -a- (*-U- in the passive), and vice
versa; the unstressed vowel in the prefix is —u— (> -3-). Hetzron
(p. 47) ascribes the -u- of the (rather late) Semitic passive (in
the stem of the perfect but in the prefix of the imperfect) to
the infixation of a hypothetic original passive particle. However,
passive is late in Afrasian.

11 In the Sidamo languages, if a chain of predicative words
occurs, only one (the main) verbal form is built after the pattern
of the typical Cushitic secondary verbal remodelling (verbal suf-
fix as development of an auxiliary prefixed verb); the rest are
treated as 'dependent', and their suffixed part is a remodelling
of the Common Afrasian stative (?).

12 In the majority of the Cushitic languages the original
pronominal morph is almost impossible to pinpoint within the verbal
word-form.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE VERB

5.1. There is considerable variety in the verbal structures of the
different Afrasian languages, but the major part of them is charac-
terized by the distinction, at first, between the categories of
'action' and 'state', and later, between 'transitivity' and 'intran-
sitivity'. The verbs of action also distinguish two aspects1,
punctive (instantaneous) and durative (protracted, or continuous).
When the opposition 'action vs. state' is replaced by the opposition
'transitivity vs. intransitivity', a special predicative form of
state is no longer necessary. Aspectual forms evolve into perfective
and imperfective aspects and later on into tenses — past and present-
future. Still later, more complicated forms of tenses emerge. The
verb is conjugated for persons of the subject with the help of pro-
nominal affixes discussed above. The verbs of action (transitive
verbs as well as verbs of motion) may also have an object, expres-
sed by a pronominal suffix. In order to facilitate comparison we
will use throughout the terms 'Perfective' ( aspeotus perfeotivus ,

or otherwise punotualis) and 'Imperfective' (.aspeotus imperfeotivus,
otherwise ouvsvvus) for the forms of the preterite tense (or the
instantaneous aspect) and the present-future (or the continuous
aspect) , in spite of the fact that in the grammars of the individual
languages other terms are mostly used. These latter terms are tradi-
tional and, as a matter of fact, mostly incorrect, e.g. "Preterite"
and "Present" in Akkadian, "Perfect" and "Imperfect" in the other
Semitic languages, "Aorist" and "Imperfect", or "Factum" and "Fiens"
in Berbero-Libyan, "Perfect" and "Present" in Cushitic, etc. Beside
that, we shall pay attention to the form of the 'Jussive' which is
used to express different modal categories (obligation, request,
possibility, etc.), as well as the 'Imperative'. In all these forms
(except the Imperative) we will use, for comparison, the form of the
3rd person singular of the subject.

5.2. All Semitic, Cushitic and Berbero-Libyan languages posses-
sed, at a certain time in their development, a prefixal conjuga-
tion of the verbs of action, based on two different stems: One stem
was characterized by a reduced (usually i/u) vocalism, having the
pattern *ia-(C\) CzVC$-z , and being used for the Perfective (Punctual)
aspect as well as for the Jussive mood3 (a similar stem but with suf-

6-3 287

85

fixes denoting person, number and gender, was used in the Imperative).
Another stem — j V-CiVCzVCz in Semitic, ^V-C-iCzaC^ in Cushitic — was
used for the Imperfective (Cursive) aspect. Besides, a suffixal
conjugation existed, which was used for predicates of state (Sta-
tive or "form of quality and state").4

The problem of the original character of the formal distinction
between instantaneous (perfective) and continuous (imperfective)
aspects is still controversial. Thus, M. Cohen, A.Klingenheben and
others considered the aspectual oppositions as secondary, and the
prefix-conjugated verbal form, viz. perfective, as the only primary
form. In accordance with their arguments, some scholars consider
the vowel of the Perfective as the root vowel. My point of view,
based on the situation in the most archaic documented Afrasian lan-
guages and following O.Rossler, J. Friedrich and others, is that
the apophony of the prefix-conjugated Perfective (and Jussive), and
the Imperfective verbal forms was original [Diakonoff 1967]. As to
the difficulty caused by the gemination of the second radical in
the imperfective stem in Akkadian, I once suggested to overcome it
by referring to the influence of stress. Indeed, the "normal" Ak-
kadian stress * ' iV-C i<zC zaC would have caused the elision of the
first stem vowel, so that this form would have been reduced to
*” i-C\ CzaCi-, and thus would be contaminated with the perfective
form of the intransitive verb £i~C iC zaC 3- > ’ i-C zdC $ ; this may
have_been the reason for the development: *iV~'CiaCzaC3 >

'CxaCzaC3.

I believed that this explanation was valid also for Cushitic
(at that time I was familiar only with the forms in Bedawye, Saho-
'Afar and Sidamo in old transcriptions), as well as for Berber. The
forms of the Perfective and Imperfective coincide in the latter
(i-CiCzaCz) in all- triconsonantal verbs where all the consonants
are "strong" (i.e. are present in the verbal form in any position),
so that it becomes necessary to distinguish them by a special par-
ticle ad preceding the form of the Imperfective. This was Caused by
phenomena typical only of Berber (merging of the short vowels *a,

*i, *u into a, and reduction of one of the two neighbouring a >
zero) . Therefore this situation certainly could not have been an ori-
ginal one. In fact, where the last radical is "weak", the difference
between Perfective and Imperfective remains: Perfective i-gmi <
Ha-gmii 'he sought', i-ndu < *ia-nduyi 'he churned' — Imperfective
i-gmai < *£a-g(a)mai , i-nda(u) < *ia~n(a)dau. It might be possible
to interpret the forms of Imperfective as developed from ^j-a-gmaj,,
*ia-ndau, but in this case it would have been necessary to resolve
the problem of non-differentiation between these forms and the in-
transitive verbs, i.e. the same problem as in Akkadian.

A.Zaborski has convincingly argued in his excellent monograph
[Zaborski 1975] that in Proto-Cushitic there was an opposition of
the instantaneous and the continuous aspect in the form: Perfective
^ia-C-^CziCz. Imperfective ia-CzCzaCz. This could satisfactorily
explain the Berber forms, supposing that, in Proto-Berber, there exist-
ed the forms: *£a-rtul — *ia-rtal ; *ia-gmii/ia-gmi — *ia-gmai ; *ia-
ndv.iL/*ia-ndu — * io.-nd.au. The objection concerning the coincidence
of -a-forms with the verb of intransitive action can probably be

86

removed tjy the fact that such forms (as well as the latter passive)
had in the Imperfective the vocalization *yi/u-C\CzaCz, as is cor-
roborated by the data of Central Semitic languages: cf. Hebrew ia-
bd(>) '(he) will enter' — a verb of action, formed according to
the transitive pattern, but ie-bos '(he) brought shame upon
himself' — according to the pattern of intransitive verbs; Ugaritic
5 a-qtul - 'I shall kill' but ’i-mhas '1 shall hit' (the verbs which
had 7j, y, h, ' , h, ’ as a second or a third radical where conjugat-
ed according to the pattern of intransitive verbs because of the
change u > a in the contact with these consonants) . The forms of
the Imperfective in Peripheral Semitic languages: i.e. Akk. *i—
CmCzVCi, Ethiopian ^3-CzaCz3C%, MahrT jii-C ipCzeC $ < Ha-C iaC zo.C ? )
might then be considered as secondary. However, I am still of the
opinion that the full vocalism form of the Imperfective was very
ancient, and that it was caused by the necessity to distinguish
Imperfective and Perfective in the verb of intransitive action,
because the difference of the prefixes *jXL~ and *£•£— was lost very
e£rly in Northern and in Southern Peripheral Semitic languages, as
well as, without any doubt, in Cushitic and Berbero-Libyan.

I believe that there existed a Punctual and a Cursive aspect
already at the stage of Common "Semito-Cushito-Berber" . The history
of the development of its vocalization will become more clear to us
when the historical accentuation of Afrasian languages is recon-
structed. It seems quite probable, that the difference between
aspects was realized at first by tonal oppositions. When dynamic
accent had replaced the tonal one, it caused changes which were not
the same for the whole Afrasian area.

5.3. Old Akkadian — the most archaic language of the Semitic
branch — reflects that stage of the linguistic development, when
the prefixal conjugation of the stem with reduced vocalism was used
for the formation of the Perfective and the Jussive (it was also
the stem of the Imperative) , and the stem with the full vocalism
-CjaCzVC was used for the Imperfective. Later on the function of a
"Perfect" was transferred in Akkadian to one of the T-stirpes (cf.
below), and the form of Perfective (but with a Subjunctive mood
marker - u ) was from that time on used only for the verbs in subor-
dinate clauses. Besides, there was a conjugated Stative (with suf-
fixed personal markers) expressing a state which had already occurr-
ed and is still continuing. These is every reason to reconstruct a
similar situation in Old Cushitic, with the only difference that the
Imperfective and the Perfective were differentiated somewhat diffe-
rently.

Apporoximately similar is the situation in Kabyle, one of the
modern Berber languages5, with the reservation that the original
vocalism of the Imperfect is not quite clear, and that the Stative
was converted into a Qualitative denoting not just any state which
has taken place and is continuing, but only a qualitative state
('being red',, 'being cold', etc.).

In Southern Peripheral Semitic the situation is the same, but
another form is used for the Perfective, viz. without conjugation
by personal prefixes (in the 1st and 2nd persons it is conjugated
by suffixes; they originate from the same archetype as the Akkadian
Stative) . The Jussive preserves the old form, and because of this

6-4 287

87

it no longer tallies with the Perfective, but has a wider distribu-
tion, approximately as the Akkadian Jussive and Subjunctive taken
together.

At last, in the Central Semitic languages the Jussive preserves
its old form, however not only the form of Perfective is new, but
also the form of the Imperfective (namely that of the Jussive + suf-
fix -u, viz., it is identical with the Akkadian Subjunctive of the
Perfective) .

J.Kuryiowicz proposed a concept, based on certain general
theoretical considerations deduced from the historical development
of verbs in other languages, that the Akkadian type is the original
one. In particular, J . Kuryiowicz pointed out that the Arabic and
Hebrew Jussive preserved obvious traces of its former perfective
semantics. These traces are the following: (a) in Hebrew, the Jus-
sive is used instead of the Perfective after the particle yia- (.if-Sii
cons e cut ivum) , and sometimes (in poetry!) also without this particle;
(b) in Arabic, the Jussive has a Perfective meaning after the
particle of emphatic negation lean ( lam ia-qtul 'he did by no means
kill'), as well as in conditional sentences (as in Akkadian), freely
alternating in this case with the New Perfective also in desidera-
tive phrases.6 Hence, it is possible to surmise that in Central Se-
mitic languages the form qatal(a) (originally Stative) had supplant-
ed a form of the Perfective of the pattern similar to Akkadian ’■£-
prus || Arabic ia-qtul which had existed earlier. The origin of the
form qatal will be discussed below.

The Southern Peripheral type originally coincided in principle
with the Akkado-Berbero-Old-Cushitic one; the only difference was
the use of the Central Semitic secondary Imperfective ia-qtul-u.

5.4. O.Rossler [kossler 1950^ paid attention to the fact that
in Mahrl (a Southern Peripheral language) only transitive verbs
form Imperfective after the pattern *'jca-paras ; according to him,
the same was true for the Berbero-Libyan languages.7 The situation
with intransitive verbs is different. In Mahri, intransitive verbs
form the Imperfective after the pattern *iu/i-pras and the Jussive
is formed in the same way. Thus, the Jussive of transitive verbs
tallies in Mahrl with the Old (lost) Perfective, while the Jussive
of intransitive verbs tallies with the Imperfective.

O.Rossler believed, that in Central Semitic languages the form
of the Imperfective of transitive verbs *%a-prus (~u) was adapted
to the form of the Jussive ia-prus because of the influence of ana-
logy with the intransitive verb, where, according to him, the Jus-
sive *£tl/i-prae originally coincided with the Imperfective *ju/£-
pras (-u) . But this explanation cannot be accepted for the following
reasons: 1) transitive verbs are much more numerous than intransi-
tive ones, and their part in the language is more important, hence
the restructuring of the transitive verb after the pattern of the
intransitive is not probable; 2) the primary character of the cor-
relation of the Jussive precisely with the Perfective is probable
not only because of the considerations brought forward by J.Kurylo-
wicz, but also because in Akkadian the Jussive of intransitive
verbs of action coincides directly with the Perfective while in
Mahri, the old Perfective simply does not exist (therefore, it is
impossible to say whether it differed in form from the Jussive as

88

far as intransitive verbs are concerned); in Berber a difference in
forms of the transitive and intransitive verbs cannot be proved,
because a form of the Berber basic stirps transitive Imperfective
*ia-parras does not exist, while the vocalism i-fras may reflect
also forms with the a vocalism of the last syllable (since in Ber-
ber 8 and often also zero < *u, *i or *a) .

This point of view of O.Rossler was seriousiy criticized by
A.Klingenheben [Klingenheben 1956]. According to him, the Afrasian
protolanguage possessed originally only one verbal form, but it
had two pronunciations — a reduced one (Allegro-Ausspraehe: *ia-
pvu/i/as) and a fully vocalized (Lento-Ausspraahe: ia-pavu/'i/aa) ,
Originally there was no semantic distinction between these forms;
later the form *£<z-prft/i/a.s could have acquired perfective
semantics in some languages, and . imperfective in others. But
the suggestion that formal distinctions may precede semantic
distinctions can hardly be accepted. Besides, examples from other
languages demonstrate that for intransitive verbs conj ugational
forms devoid of aspectual opposition are not uncommon, but the
distinction berween perfective and imperfective aspects (original-
ly — Cursive and Punctual) is very archaic in the transitive
verbs. 8

It seems that none of the authors who adopted the concept of the
primary origin of the Central Semitic form *ia-CiC2uC3~u as devoid
of aspectual oppositions, has noticed that this is a marked form,
and because of this alone it cannot be the original one. O.Rossler
as well as A.Klingenheben practically identify the forms *£a~C 1C2UC 3
and *ia-Ci.C2uC3-u.

5.5. I have suggested the following reconstruction of the Proto-
Semitic structure of the verbal forms:

Imperative

Perfective—
— Jussive9

Imperfective

Aspectless
verbal form
in the
subordinate
clauses

transitive verb *puvus
intransitive

verb *pVras10

*ia-prus

*ia-p ( a)ras *jia-pvus -u

*pV-pras

*j,V-pvas-u

In other words, the intransitive verbs of action, as well as
all the verbs in subordinate clauses did not express aspect — a
phenomenon known also in other archaic, languages.

In Akkadian, a secondary Imperfective of the intransitive verbs
of action was formed after the pattern ’i^parru/is by analogy with
transitive verbs, and a dissection of- verbal forms of the subordi-
nate clause (Subjunctive) into aspectual categories occurred: Per-
fective ’i-prus-u, ’ i-pvas-u ; Imperfective ’ i~parras-u, ’i-parri/
us-u.

In Southern Peripheral Semitic languages, a new Perfective of
Stative origin was formed according to the pattern para/i/us (a) ,
but the remaining forms (including the Jussive) remained intact.11

In Central Semitic languages also, a new Perfective of Stative
origin after the pattern *para/i/us(a) was formed, but the old form
of the Imperfective was here lost. The reasons for this development
may be presented in the following way: the form of the Jussive *ia~
prus, as well as the form of the verb of the subordinate clause
*^a-prus~u were aspectless (as they still are in Mahri), and
because of that, though tallying in form with the Old Perfective,
they could also express the imperfective aspect. With the emergence
of the new Perfective para/i/us(a) , which was used in main as well
as in subordinate clauses, the form of the Jussive (with reduced
vocalism, i.e. identical to the form of the Old Perfective) and
the form of the verb of subordinate clauses (identical to the form
of the old Perfective with reduced vocalism plus a suffix -u)
became purely imperfective. Thus, alongside of modal forms with
reduced vocalism, only a single asymmetrical form of the transitive
verb with complete vocalism remained, viz. the Indicative Imperfec-
tive: ia-par(r) as. This form was therefore supplanted by another
verbal form, next to it in frequency — *ia-qprus-u. In fact, while
in Akkadian the form *iV-prus-u is used only in subordinate claus-
es, in Arabic the form ia-qtul-u is used as imperfective in the
subordinate clause as well as in the main clauses (except subordi-
nate clauses of purpose which have a particular verbal form ia-qtul-
a ) . In the main clause it supplanted the old form of Imperfective
*ia-paras , *ia-qatal, but in subordinate clauses it simply remained
in its former place. This dislodgement was made easier by the ana-
logy with the intransitive verb of action, which possessed a form
with reduced vocalism *%V-p>ras in the Imperfective. 12 We believe
that this form, too, was aspectless by origin, but by the time in
question it was supplanted in the Perfective by the new form pari/
us (a) .

A detailed analysis of the poorly studied verbal system of the
living Ethio-Semitic languages, which has lately begun, may lead
to the necessity of reconsideration of the proposed reconstruction.

As to Berbero-Libyan languages, they have departed a long way
from the prototype, so that it is much more difficult to reconstruct
their history, even conjecturally. It is probable, however, that
they have mainly preserved the ancient structural pattern, with dif-
ferent changes under the influence of analogies and elisions.

The development of the Cushitic languages followed another way.
The oldest stock of verbs continued to use the archaic type of
conjugation. But a new type arose, collaterally with the old one.
This new type was gradually ousting the old one, until it was com-
pletely lost in the Southern and a part of the Eastern and Central
Cushitic.

A similar process probably took place in the Omotic languages.13

This new type of conjugation was derived from analytical
predicative syntagms which included a deverbative nominal form and
a form of the auxiliary verb (or of its participle), conjugated by
means of affixes. These syntagms later merged into single lexemes,
in which the relics of the auxiliary verb together with the subject
pronominal affix were converted into a paradigm of new synthetic
morphemes of verbal conjugation. Cf, the following examples:

90

Bedawye

(Northern

Cushitic)

Geleba

(Eastern

Cushitic)

Perfective
Sing. 1st p.

2nd p. m.

f .

3rd p. m.
f.

PI. 1st p.

2nd p.

3rd p.
Imperf ective
Sing. 1 st p.

2nd p. m.

-an < *-’ a-’ an
-ta < *-ta-’an
-tai < *-ta-’ an-i
—La < *—La-’ an
-ta < *—ta-’an
-na < *-na-’an
-tana < *-ta-’an-na
—Lana < *—La-’ an—na

-ani < *-’a-’ani
-teni < *-ta-’ani
etc.

-e

-u-te

-u-te

} -u-te

-a

-uta

etc.

Yamma

(Omotic)

—L/en
} —L/ete

} ~i/e

~(a/u)ni
-( o ) ti
—L/ete

-a/una

-a/uta

etc.

It is clear that in Bedawye the new conjugation is formed from
the prefixal conjugation of an auxiliary verb *’ an 'to be' , Imper-
fective *3 ani; cf. the "Old" conjugation of the intransitive verb
*ngd: Perfective * a-ngad , te-ngad, etc., Imperfective ’ a-ngadi ,
te-ngadi, etc. It is more difficult to reconstruct the old proto-
type in Yamma because of numerous simplifications and formations
by analogy, but there is no doubt that the conjugation was similar
in principle. It is probable, that it, too, is based on the old
conjugation of an auxiliary verb ’in, Imperfective ’ana (or *’ani,
*at}a?) .

A similar development took place in the Semitic Aramaic lan-
guages at the Late Stage.

5.6. We have examined the simplest situation, but actually it
could be more complicated. Thus, in Akkadian there are not only
transitive verbs of the usual type ’i-pvus, ’i-parras 'to divide',
but also transitive verbs of the type ’i-pqid, ’i-paqqid 'to charge';

* i-sditi , ’ i-saddih 'to march' (a transitive verb of motion, with
the object expressing place), of the type ’i-rpud, ’ i-vappud 'to
run' (over smth., with the Accusative case), and of the type ’ i-lmad ,

’ i-tamnad 'to learn (smth.)' as well as intransitive verbs of the
type * i-mrus , ’i-mavvus 'to fall ill' and of the type ’i-Tgliq, i-Tgal-
Liq 'to perish' (apart from an archaic type ’ i-blat 'to revive'). In
other Semitic languages, i.e. in Arabic, a considerable variety of
forms is also attested.

In spite of considerable semantic shifts distorting the original
situation, it is worth trying to classify these types.

A transitive type Akk. ’i-prus, ’i-pavras '(he) has divided, is
dividing'; Arab, £a-nzur ( -u) 1 4 '(he) is keeping, taking care of* is
the main type for transitive action.

A transitive type Akk. ’i-sdih, ’i-Saddih '(he) has marched, is
marching', ’ i-pqid , ’i-paqqid '(he) has charged, is charging'; Arab.
ia-dvib(-u) '(he) is striking' was originally, as it seems, used for
verbs of motion as well as for verbs of transitory, instantaneous
or superficial effect.

91

THE AFRASIAN STATIVE

Language

Number

Person

Gender

Semitic

Egyptian

Stative

New Perfective

"Pseudo-

pariciple"

Akkadian

Gs ’ 3Z

Arabic

Sg.

1st p.

-a-ku

-ku

-tu

-kw-j2

2nd p. m.

" f.

-a-ta

S-ti

-ka

-ki

-ta

-ti

} -t~j

3rd p. m.

" f.

-0 1
-at1

-a1
- at 1

-a1

-at1

-w/-j3

-t-j

PI.

1 st p.

-a-nu

-na

-na

-wjn

2nd p. m.

" f.

-a-tunu

-a-tina

-ksrm

-Ion

-timu

-tunna

} -t(j)wn-j

3rd p. m.

" f.

Hi

— u1
-a1

-u1
- na

—

1 These endings belonged originally to the m. and f. gender of
the predicate (st. praedicativus, s . indeterminatus) .

2 The suffix -j has defied explanation. We do not now think
it is convincing that it is a relic of a prefixally conjugated
auxiliary verb. Taking into account the great archaicity of Egypt-
ian, it is improbable that it already had developed and lost a
prefix conjugation of the verb at a time when in contemporaneous
Akkadian the 'classical' system of prefix conjugation was still

at an early stage of development. Therefore, it seems more
probable that -j is a predicative copula of a deictic pronominal
origin.

-W is here the nominal m. morph, also in predicative nouns.

92

Table 4

Berb ero-Libyan

Cushitic

Chadic

Qabyle

Sidamo

Mubi

Qualitative

Relative tenses.
Perfective8

Suffixed form
of Perfect II

-ay (< *-akk)

-e

-na

]f -ad (< *-att)

-te

-ga (< * -ka)

-ge (< *-kai)

-0 1
-at1

-e

- te (< *t0)

-g-u*

- g-i 5

■■ -u1

-ne

-ne

] -tine

} -gun (< *kun)

} ~ne

} -g-oB (< *k-ay)

The suffix -j is of the same origin as elsewhere; in writing, either
the one or the other was not spelled out.

k g- < *k- is a determinative element, -u is the ancient m. morph.

5 g- < *k- is a determinative element, — £.< *-ai is the ancient f.

morph in nouns and pronouns (-£ began to be used as a feminine morph
apparently at a later date) .

6 g~< *k- is a determinative element in Chadic, the suffix -aj<

is identical to the Egyptian -u [ay] and is a nominal m. pi. morph

alternating with -U.

7 Possibly an archaic form of the adjective plural, cf. Akkadian
~ut~.

8 Possibly from an auxiliary verb + suffix.

93

A transitive type Akk. ’i-hnad, ’i-larrmad '(he) has learned,
is learning'; Arab, ia-qta' (~u) '(he) is cutting', da-'lam-u '(he)
is knowing' has no clear semantic explanation; in a considerable
part of the verbs of this type the vocalism is caused by phonetic
positional conditions (vicinity of pharyngeal consonants, etc.),
but in a certain part of the verbs this vocalic pattern cannot be
explained away in this way. J . Kurylowicz was of the opinion that
this type originally included medial verbs.

Intransitive verbs express in Akkadian, strictly speaking, not
a state but an intransitive action, namely a transition into a
state (Ingressive) : ’i-mrus '(he) fell ill', ’i-marrus '(he) mayor
must fall ill, is falling ill, will fall ill'; * i-hliq '(he) perish-
ed', ’ ■i-halliq '(he) is perishing, will perish, may or must perish',
cf. ’i-prus ■ (he) has divided', ’-i-parras '(he) is dividing, will
divide, may or must divide'. The state was expressed by a special
predicative form of an adjective (or participle) of state. This
situation may be considered as the original one. Intransitive (in-
gressive) verbs later acquired in Akkadian the vocalization of
verbs of motion which supplanted the oldest Common Semitic vocaliza-
tion of the verbs of intransitive action proper, having the pattern
V-pras , archaic Akkadian ji-blat 'he has revived'15; Arab, ja-
hsan(u) 'he is grieving', Hebr. ii-kbad 'he is becoming heavy', Eth.
(Jussive) ia-Vbas '(he) should dress himself', Mahrl -pi-tbor < HV-
obar 'he is breaking'.

The distribution of vocalic patterns according to semantic
groups of transitive and intransitive verbs is not quite strictly
observed in the majority of historically documented Semitic lan-
guages: different semantic shifts, the influence of analogy and
various positional phonetic factors have caused rather early the
violation of the semantic borders between the different types. So,
gradually, linguistic consciousness began to disregard them, the
more so, that a formal distinction between transitive and intransi-
tive verbs had lost much of its importance in languages with a
nominative verbal construction. In the Berbero-Libyan languages the
vocalization patterns were obliterated by the shift *a, *i, *u >

S, 0, and by later phonetical phenomena.

5.7. Above we have already mentioned the Akkadian predicate of
state, the so-called 'Permansive' or 'Stative' which had a suffixed
conjugation, analogous to the Central Semitic new Perfective (the
so-called "Perfect"). 16 (Table 4)

It is generally accepted nowadays that the perfective usage of
the form qatal(a) in Central and Southern Semitic languages is se-
condary. Not only in Akkadian, but also in other Semitic languages
of the Ancient stage this form was rare and, as it seems, was ori-
ginally used for predicates of state; in other words, it was quite
similar not only in form, but also in semantics to Akkadian and the
Old Egyptian forms of, quality, and of state emerged as a result of
action, i.e. to the Akkadian "Stative" and the Old Egyptian "Pseudo-
Participle". The exchanging of the old Perfective (with the prefix-
ed conjugation) for the form qatal(a) and correspondingly *maric(a)
*kavum(a) (cf. below) can, in all probability, be explained by the
fact that this form, originally expressing a state as the result
of an accomplished action, was inevitably perfective by its nature.

94

Its introduction instead of the Old Perfective allowed to distin-
guish the perfective and the imperfective aspects not only in the
verb of action (where they already did exist as punctual and cursi-
ve) , but now also in the verbs of state.

In other Afrasian languages of the Semito-Cuahito-Berber group
there also exist verbal forms with suffixed conjugation. These have
already been discussed above, and we shall also return to them
again below. 17

If we now take a group of languages where the old prefixed con-
jugation is lacking, we shall see that here, too, the Stative with
the suffixed conjugation is also present: One of. the Egyptian ver-
bal forms (which was already discussed above) — the so-called form
of quality, state and result of action, or, otherwise, the "Pseudo-
Participle", also erroneously called the "Old Perfect", has long
ago been compared with the Akkadian Stative, because it coincides
with it almost completely as far as semantics are concerned, and
has much in common with it in form The form of the so-called Pre-
terite II, or 'suffixal form of Perfect' in the Eastern Chadic lan-
guage Mubi probably also belongs here.

All these typical Afrasian forms are predicates of state, or
statives by their origin. They have a uniform conjugation by means
of the suf fixation of the short form of the personal pronoun in
the direct case to a nominal stem, especially, as it seems, to the
stem of the participle of state (verbal adjective).

In fact, the Akkadian Stative can only with some caution be
regarded as a verbal form proper. Like the Kabyle Qualitative and
the. Egyptian form of quality and state, or "Pseudo-Participle", it
is, by origin, a nominal form, usually a form of the verbal adject-
ive. In the case presented below, it is the form of the participle
of state CiaCz(i)C3-u-m, in the status praedioativus (and thus,
without case inflexion): C^aCziC^ . 18 In the 1st and 2nd persons a
short form of the independent personal pronoun in the direct (abso-
lute) case is attached to it, and in the 3rd person feminine, the
nominal marker of this gender. Despite the fact that the "conjugat-
ed" form of the participle of state is especially frequent in the
role of nominal predicate (simply because the participle of state
is a paradigmatic nominal form obligatory for any verb) actually
any noun may in Akkadian in principle be conjugated in a similar
manner, e.g. the participle of action: paris-aku, pdris-dta, paris-
ati., parts, paris-at 'I am (the) divider', etc.; mu-£a-pris-aku,
mu-sa-pris-ata , mu-Sa-pris-ati , mu-sa-pris, mu-sa-pris-at 'I am
the one who makes divide', etc., — and even any substantive: Sarr-
aku, &arr-ata, Sarr-ati, *ar, &arr-at 'I am king', etc. Certainly,
the latter forms are attested mainly at the latest stages of the
development of Akkadian, but this only proves that even in Neo-Ak-
kadian the Stative was still perceived as a nominal and not a verb-
al form.

It should be noted that the participle of state may in Akkadian
have three different vocalic patterns: sabit 'taken; having taken
and keeping'; mams 'ill, fallen ill' and Tjalaq 'perished'. The
participle of state is not the same as a passive participle: this
is demonstrated by the sabit example.

95

Since it was not confined to passive semantics, this is why it
could have served as prototype of the "New" Central and Southern
Semitic Perfective (the "Perfect") , which also possessed three pat-
terns, viz. a pattern qatal(a) 'has killed' for transitive verbs;
a pattern *maric(a) 'ill, has been ill' and a pattern karum(a)

'(was) generous'19 for intransitive verbs. There is a complete ana-
logy for this final -a in the short -a of the Old Akkadian and Amo-
rite nominal forms in status praedicativus (indeterminatus) . 20 In
our opinion, the predicative expression of the category of state
(which is to be distinguished from the intransitive action, i.e.,
from the Ingressive) was nominal also in Common Afrasian. When lat-
er on the Stative was transformed into a general Perfective, the
verbal predicate in the Perfective was, accordingly, supplanted by
a form of an originally nominal predicate (the predicate form of
the participle of state) . This is a phenomenon widely known in the
history of different language families; for instance, the history
of the Indo-European Perfect — also a Stative by its origin — ' is
quite similar.

Doubts have been expressed about the reality of a Common Afra-
sian origin of the Stative. But despite the fact that it is attest-
ed only in a few individual languages, note that these languages
belong to all branches of the Afrasian language family (cf. table 4).

5.8. In Egyptian, all "conjugated" forms, except the "Pseudo-
Participle" (Stative) consist of a verbal stem (probably a verbal
noun, e.g. a participle or a name of action) and a pronoun, which
is attached to the verb either directly or with the help of par-
ticles and auxiliary words (prepositions). Only in the "form of
quality and state" ("Pseudo-Participle") may the subject markers
be considered actual verbal affixes, but we have already seen that
the nominal origin of this form is also quite probable. The verbal
form of the "Pseudo-Participle" originated from a shortened nominal
sentence ('I [am] hearing') or from an appositive construction (noun
plus participle) 'hearing, I', which is genetically the same thing.
Therefore, only here the subject markers arise from pronouns of the
direct case. In all the other ancient Egyptian verbal forms the
subject markers are not verbal affixes in the proper sense but pos-
sessive pronouns, i.e., from the historical point of view, we have
here an attributive ('my hearing') or adverbial ('hearing for me')
construction. Therefore, if the subject of action is expressed in
a sentence by a noun, and not by a pronoun, no special subject mark-
er is attached to the predicate at all: s$m-j 'I hear' ; sgm-k 'you
(masc. sing.) hear'; s|m-c 'you (fem. sing.) heat'; s$m-f 'he hears'
s^m-s 'she hears', i.e. exactly in the same way as in: pr-j 'my
house', pr-k 'your (masc. sing.) house', pr- 6 'your (fem. sing.)
nouse', pr- f 'his house', pr-s 'her house'. But s$m z’,-j 'hear(s)
son-my' . Both S3m-f and sgri z\-j are the same attributive construc-
tion. 1 As we have already pointed out earlier, it may be inferred
from all this, that if a subject of quality or state resulting from
an action expressed by a "Pseudo-Participle" is in the direct case,
then the subject of action must be in an oblique (genitive) ■ case .

Other "conjugated" verbal forms of Old Egyptian are formed
after the pattern s$m-f, i.e. as pseudo-attributive or pseudo-pre-
positional constructions: sgm-n-f, sgfn-ln-f, sgn-hr-f, sgm-k’, -f etc.

96

According to W.Westendorf, the author of an excellent study of
the Old Egyptian verb, the passive participle in the role of the
predicate of a nominal sentence was used as the prototype for the
verbal forms mr sn 'beloved (is) brother'. In this construc-

tion the logical subject is expressed by an attribute of the pre-
dicate in the form of the genitive case (i.e. in possessive form):
mr it sn 'beloved (of) father (is) son' ; mr-f sn 'beloved-his (is)
brother'. This form was neutral as to aspect oppositions, but apart
from it there was also a durative participle of the type mrr. 22 But
in spelling (and probably, partially also in the actual language)
it was not always possible to differentiate between these two forms.
Because of this, or by some other reasons, another construction
emerged in Old Egyptian, viz. mr-n-f 'beloved for him'. This con-
struction acquired a perfective semantic, i.e. it became the form
of the Perfective' aspect. It was followed by the assignement of the
semantics of the Imperfective aspect to the form mr-f, and of the
duration or frequency of action to the form rnrr-f.

According to W.Westendorf, originally the Perfective was expres-
sed by the "Pseudo-Participle" for the transitive and intransitive
verbs alike, and the Imperfective was expressed by a prefixal conjuga-
tion of the type of the Akkadian ’i-prus. Later on the form s$m-n-f
supplanted the "Pseudo-Participle" in transitive verbs, and the
form sgm-f supplanted it in the prefixal conjugation. Then, at last,
these forms supplanted both the "Pseudo-Participle", and the Imper-
fective with the prefixal conjugation, in intransitive verbs also.

It is not possible to accept this reconstruction. It is scarce-
ly probable that the "Pseudo-Participle" could have ever expressed
the perfect aspect of transitive verbs at so early a period, taking
into consideration its nature and origin [Osing 1976J. 23 The trans-
formation of the form expressing quality and state resulting from
an action, into a form of the perfect aspect is theoretically pos-
sible, and is attested in actual languages. But it is difficult to
imagine that a form which already began to express the perfective
aspect everywhere, would lose this function and return to the de-
notation only of the state resulting from an action. Besides, as it
was demonstrated above, this form appears in Afrasian languages as
a Perfective (and not as a Stative) rather late, and only in one
group of Central Semitic languages.

It should be added that one may doubt that a single pattern,
viz. that of a "passive" participle, could be always used as the
basis for the formation of verbal forms of the sgm-f type. Namely,
there is reason to believe, that the finite verbal form could have
been based on variously vocalized forms of the verbal noun: cf . Afra-
sian *hmm, *hsb > Eg. hnm (with palatalization, i.e. \_*himim-?~\) ,
but hsb (without palatalization, therefore with another vocalism,
i.e. [hasab-] ) . Cf. below on the supposed Common Afrasian "Passive".

It is more probable, that there never was any form with prefix-
al conjugation in Egyptian, and that, in accordance with the pos-
sessive construction which obtained there, the conjugated forms
of the verb of action arose directly from a preverbal stage (or,
in any case, before a prefixal conjugation had emerged) in the
form of nominal attributive and prepositional constructions, i.e.
szm-f, ssm-n-f, etc.

7 287

97

5.9. The Chadic verbal system is yet enigmatic in many points.

It is probably too early to theorize on the Central and Eastern
Chadic verb, so we shall here limit ourselves to discussion of some
features of the Western Chadic verb. In principle, the verbal form
consists, as a rule, of three more or less independent elements
(at the end of the last, also different suffixes are possible),
e.g. Hausa kira; 3rd person sing. Jussive iq-0 kira 'let him call';
Perfective ia(-n) kira 'he has called'; Imperfective £a-na kira- ya
'he is calling'. It would be natural to think, that the first two
elements constitute a prefixally conjugated auxiliary verb, and
the third, a nominal (deverbative) stem; the more so because sub-
ject pronouns seem to be very much similar to the Semito-Cushito-
Berber pronominal markers of the subject of action in the verbal
conjugation (cf. table 1); 1st p. 0- (or 3a-/’i-), 2nd p. masc. ka-,
fern, hi-, 3rd p. masc. j-a-, fern, ta -; 1st p. pi. mu-, 2nd p. feu-,'
3rd p. su-. In those cases when the marker -0/-n/-na was substitut-
ed by another one, i.e. ka, etc. (these are markers of different
tense, aspect and modal forms), it seemed possible to explain away
this element as originating in some verb playing an auxiliary role.

However, P. Newman and R.Schuh [Newman-Schuh 1974] have recently
demonstrated that only in Hausa is the 3rd person singular of the
first element of the verbal form actually similar to the Semito-Cu-
shito-Berber personal marker of the subject of action *jia-. In the
other Chadic languages other pronouns are attested here (e.g., su;
si < si) , and in certain cases the whole paradigm of personal ver-
bal markers coincides with the possessive pronoun of the 3rd p.
masc. singular. As to the second element, it coincides either with
a nota genitivi (a pronoun -n, -na introducing an attribute), or
with a preposition (ka, etc.). Thus, the whole Chadic verbal con-
struction may be considered as an exact copy of the Egyptian
83m-n-f, s^m-k] -f2 4 , etc. (up to the absence of a verbal pronominal
marker in cases when the noun expressing the subject of action is
present in the sentence) . The only difference is that in Chadic this
construction has an inverse order of elements, correlating with the
usual Chadic word order, which is inverted as compared to the Egyp-
tian and Semitic one. The hypothesis of P. Newman and R.Schuh is of
great importance for the reconstruction of the history of Afrasian
languages, but it needs further elaboration and checking, because
in the Chadic branch, taken as a whole, there are few evident coin-
cidences of personal markers of the verb with a paradigm of posses-
sive pronouns or any other pronominal set.

5.10. A specific type of verbal inflection is presented in
Southern Cushitic languages and in an Eastern Cushitic language,
Somali. Here the function of denotation of the relations between
predicate and the other parts of the sentence, including the sub-
ject, is performed by a special lexico-grammatical unit, attached
to the verbal predicate, namely a 'selector', or otherwise, an
'indicator'. In a certain sense, the indicator corresponds to the
first two elements of the Chadic verbal form (expressing person,
number and gender of the subject, as well as the aspect, etc.). All
this is expressed in the indicator in a synthetic form. Just as the
first element of the Chadic verbal form, the indicator is obviously
of a pronominal origin. The various grammatical categories are

98

expressed in the indicator by vowels, but in the first place by ton-
al oppositions. In Southern Cushitic and Somali the indicators arise
from elements of a verbal form of the Chadic type. This means
that the Chadic type of the predicative arrangement is very archaic,
and that, if so, it was not limited to the Egyptian- Chadic subfamily
(superfamily) alone. However, if in the latter subfamily a real pre-
fixal conjugation never emerged, such is not the case in Somali:
here the prefixal verbal conjugation does exist, viz., in auxiliary
verbs. But in the Southern Cushitic languages there in no prefixal
conjugation, nor even any trace of it. So is it possible that the
spread of indicators to Somali from Southern Cushitic is an areal
phenomenon, and that Southern Cushitic does not belong to the SCB
group at all? The Southern Cushitic languages have many archaic
features also in phonology and, in general, they seem quite archaic,
and need further close comparative study.

It is evident that specifically the genetic connections of Sout-
hern Cushitic languages need a more thorough elaboration.

5.11. Passive. It has been presumed that a well-developed
system of Passive existed in Egyptian. The system of Passive perva-
des the whole system of Arabic where every participle or conjugated
verbal form possesses an active and a passive variant.25 An almost
similar situation obtains in Hebrew and Old Aramaic. But in other
Afrasian languages the situation is more complex. In the majority
of Afrasian languages, namely in Cushitic, in Berber, as well as in
such Semitic languages as Ethiopian, Akkadian and in the later
Aramaic dialects, passive semantics can be connoted by reflexive
verbal forms as a secondary development . In certain Eastern Cushi-
tic languages an ergative sentence construction prevails (opposi-
tion 'action vs. state'), and this precludes the existence of a
veritable Passive, because there is no possibility to express the
verbal action from the point of view of its logical object, and
the very notion of direct object is foreign to the ergative gramma-
tical structure.

In order to establish whether or not Passive was originally
lacking in Afrasian languages, it is useful to turn to Egyptian as
the oldest language where the existence of a well-developed Passive
is postulated.

W.Westendorf , the author of a monograph wholly devoted to Pas-
sive [Westendorf, 1953], writes: "In Egyptian ... the opposition
'Active —Passive' at least in the period of the emergence of the
suffixal conjugation was by no means what is usually understood
under the opposition of the 'active voice' versus 'passive voice'.
The Passive here is never used for the expression of the logical
object as a grammatical subject; the difference between Active and
Passive of a single verbal form consists only in the fact, that in
one case the acting person (logical subject) is explicitly menti-
oned, and in the other it is not. Thus, there is no specific forms
with different vocalism, and in syntax the subject and the object
do not change places, as, e.g. they do in the sentences: ‘The
father loves the brother’ and ‘The brother is loved by the father’.
Whether a form is to be regarded as 'active' or 'passive' depends
solely on whether the acting person is explicitly denoted or not.

But even when it is, it plays but a secondary role, because it is

7-2 287

99

included, in the Genitive, into a binominal sentence, consisting of
a passive participle (as a predicate) and the logical object (as a
grammatical subject). The use of Passive was originally not a styli-
stic category: it was not possible to choose arbitrarily either the
construction 'he loves the brother' or 'the brother is loved by
him' in order to emphasize a particular part of the sentence. The
choice of constructions is prescribed by the presence or absence
of the acting person; thus, the Passive originally performs a gram-
matical function similar to that of the Passive in Classical Arabic,
where it may be used only in the case when a person who performs
the action has by some reason to be passed over in silence", [idem.,
p. 7].

The analogy with Arabic is not quite appropriate here, since in
Arabic the Passive is a separate verbal form with specific vocalism;
while in Egyptian, the Passive originally is not a specific form,
but a specific usage of the same form which is also used in the
Active, namely when it is used impersonally. The stem of the. Egyp-
tian 'verbal' predicate is by no means a passive participle, but
either a participle of state, or, perhaps, as we pointed out above,
a name of action (masdar) . Thus, if we leave aside constructions
with participles and the later types of Passive, originating in
impersonal and reflexive forms, it is possible to state, that ori-
ginally Egyptian lacked a Passive voice as opposed to the Active
and expressing the point of view of the object by considering the
object as a grammatical subject. But Egyptian possessed a form
expressing a state, viz. the Stative. Thus we may consider Semitic
Passive as a Central Semitic innovation. Note that it is absent
from archaic peripheral languages — Akkadian and Ethiopian.26

Among other Afrasian languages something like a Passive does
exist, e.g., in Hausa (-M-vocalization of the last syllable of the
verbal stem). But neither this form does completely correspond to
the definition of Passive: it also expresses the possibility
of producing an action: ia dafu 'it can be cooked, it is cookable'.
This meaning is probably the original one when compared to the
meaning 'it is cooked'. It can by now be no doubt that this form is
a Stative and not a Passive. Thus, even in those Afrasian languages
where a "Passive" is present, it is originally a form of expression
for impersonal action, and is not opposed to the Active as a form in
which the logical object is expressed as the grammatical subject.

The identity of the formation of Stative in Hausa and the "Pas-
sive" in Egyptian (sjm-w) which are also similar to the form of
the Hausa name of action in -ua, has been pointed out in the liter-
ature. In the Semitic languages the participle of state and the
deverbative nouns close to it in semantics have a marker -U-/-U-
(or -£-/—£-), but it is already infixed into the stem: Hebr. qatul,
Aram, qatul and more often qatil 'killed', Arab, maqtul- 'killed',
Eth. qaddiis 'sanctified' (D-stem) , Akk. parts- 'divided' (cf. parts
Stative!), but cf. also Akk. karub- 'blessed', etc.; a similar situ-
ation obtains in the conjugated forms of the Passive: Hebrew qut-
ta'l (D-stem), Aram. qsfil, Arab, qutila 'killed'. The variation in
the vocalism is by itself indicative of the secondary development
of conjugated Passive forms. The Passive Imperfective is formed by
the prefix iu - instead of ia- of the Active voice. Probably this

100

form arose originally in intransitive verbs, where it was later
supplanted by the form of the prefix of the active transitive Imper-
fective, as, e.g., in Arabic. In general, Arabic Passive Imperfee'-
tive iu-qtal-u is probably in its form and origin nothing but an
archaic form of the intransitive Ingressive. The Hebrew Passive
Imperfective of the D-stem is-quttal' < *£u-quttal has certainly its
origin in *iu~qaptal and is formed by analogy with *£u-qtal. In
Egyptian, a secondary Passive was formed on the base of the form
with the impersonal pronoun tin: tin sfyn-f 'someone hears'; sgm-tw-f
'he is heard (by someone)'. In Berber (according to A.Klingenheben)

was used as an affix of derivative reflexive-passive stems
(stirpes), and is included into the verbal form: i-ti^-zra 'is seen';
i-tiu-zvi 'can be seen'. Of course, this form is in no way related
to the Akkadian "Perfect", which originally expressed a sequence of
actions (’ i-p-ta-ras < *px,s, cf. below), but later displaced the
old Perfective relegating it to the Subjunctive mood, so that it
remained only in subordinate, interrogative and negative clauses.

Above we have already pointed out the following: (1) The Nomin-
ative case was used only in order .to express a subject of the verb,
but not for simple nomination of a person or a thing. (2) The Semit-
ic accusative case probably arose from the absolute case of the
subject of a state (they partially coincided in the oldest form of
Old Akkadian and in Amorite, and are not distinguished in certain
Cushitic languages; they probably were not distinguished in Proto-
Cushitic, either). (3) In some Cushitic and Omotic languages there
is still a distinction between a "Nominative" (actually Ergative)
case in and an absolute zero case used also for the direct

object of action 0— subject of the state resulting from an action).
(4) In verbs, the pronominal marker of the subject of action (and
only later also of the subject of state, which originally was not
expressed by any verbal predicate) originated from pronouns in an
oblique case, and not from direct case pronouns. (5) In Egyptian
the verbal 'form of quality and state' belonged to a construction
with the direct case, but the verbs of action — to a possessive,
not nominative construction (i.e., a construction which demands a
subject in the oblique case, in this particular instance, in the
genitive case). (6) Intransitive ingressive verbs were probably
aspectless; the category of state was originally expressed by nomi-
nal predicates only. (7) The verbs of action actually had a 'bilater-
al" concord both with the subject of action (via the subject pro-
nominal elements of the verb) , and with the subject of the state
resulting from this action, i.e. with the direct object, via suf-
fixed pronominal elements. Now we may also add to this: (8) Origi-
nally the Afrasian languages' did not have an opposition of active
and passive voices, the Passive emerging later, originating in
impersonal and reflexive forms.

All this almost certainly means that the Afrasian languages
originally had an ergative construction of the sentence, which is
still preserved in some Cushitic and Chadic languages.

As it was said above, the object of the transitive verbs is
expressed in the majority of Afrasian languages by suffixal pronom-
inal markers. Nevertheless, Semitic conjugation usually is not
interpreted as bilateral (subject-object). This is because, first.

7-3 287

101

the pronominal object markers do not differ materially from posses-
sive suffixal and even independent pronouns; second, any transitive
verbal form can be used also without an object marker. In the Semit-
ic construction of the nominative type, the direct object is no
longer a subject of the state resulting from an action, on a par
with the subject of action. Therefore, in Semitic languages the
object marker is attached to transitive verbs in a different way
from what is usual in the ergative languages: if the object is
named in the sentence, it is not, as a rule, marked by a pronominal
marker attaching to the verb; such a marker is used exclusively if
it is the only denotation of the object in a sentence. The excep-
tions are rare. But the possibility to mark not only a subject, but
also an object of action (sometimes even an oblique object) by a
special marker attached to the verbal form is another feature which
connects Afrasian languages with their sentence structure of a, gener-
ally speaking, nominative type, with ergative languages.

5.12. The moods were expressed in Ancient Semitic languages
by external vocalic inflexion. Therefore, with the loss of such
inflexion at the Middle Stage, the moods either disappeared complet-
ely, or were preserved as relics only.

The modal system is well preserved in Classical Arabic and in
Akkadian. We shall not consider the Imperative here, because it is,
as in other languages, a specific independent conjugated form not
on a par with the other moods. Here we shall consider as modal only
forms which modify the character of the action expressed by princip-
al (aspectual) forms.

In Arabic, first of all, there is the Jussive (£a-qtul) , used
to express wishes, prohibitions, emphatic negation, and is also
used in conditional clauses ( li-na-qtul 'let us kill'; la ta-qtul
'don’t kill'; Idm ’ a-qtul 'I have by no means killed'; ’ -in ia-qtul
'if he kills/killed') .

In Akkadian grammars there is attested a Precative form ( l-i-
prus ) 'let him divide' < *l(V) + ’i-prus, where l(V) is originally
an asseverative particle, and a Vetitive (’ aj ( -’ j i-prus 'let him
not divide')27, as well as the usage of the Perfective ("Preterite")
in conditional clauses. Of course, the Akkadian Perfective coinci-
des in form with the Arabic Jussive. Therefore, we may assert that
Akkadian also possesses a Jussive of the pattern ’i-prus (coinci-
ding with the Perfective — possibly distinguished by stress or tone) .
It is used in its pure form in conditional clauses {Sum-ma ’i-prus <
*sim/n-ma iV-prus 'if he divides'; cf. Arab, ’in ia-qtul < *sin/m
ia-qtul 'if he kills') and, with appropriate particles, in order
to express a positive wish {l (V) -i-prus , cf. Arab, li-na-qtul) , and
a negative wish (’ ai-i—prus) .

The Subjunctive in Arabic (suffix -a) and in Akkadian (suffix
-u) are entirely different phenomena.

In Arabic the Subjunctive is not used in all subordinate claus-
es, but only in intentional ones, with appropriate modal particles
(subordinate conjunctions): galasa likai ia-ktub-a maktub-a-n 'he
sat down in order to write (= that he write) a letter', ’u-rid-u
’an ‘a-Srab-a 'I am thirsty', lit. 'I want that I drink'. In all
probability, this marker -a originates in the nominal marker of the

102

object -a (accusative-locative). In other subordinate clauses the
usual imperfective form in -u is used also in Arabic.

The Akkadian Subjunctive is a form of any verb of a subordi-
nate clause (except conditional clauses) . It probably originated
(as is usual in ancient ergative languages) from a form of nomina-
lization Of the finite verb in subordinate clauses by a case mark-
er: a phenomenon amply attested in Cushitic languages. In Akkadian
it is probably a locative case marker — u (<- *um? ) .

The Semitic modal markers were originally case markers expres-
sing an attribute, a complement, an object, or a locative or tempo-
ral circumstance, transferred to the verbal predicate in attribut-
ive, complement a 1 etc. subordinate clauses. This has, for the first
time in European scholarship, been demonstrated by A.P.Riftin
[Riftin 1941]. But this phenomenon is much more evident in Cushitic
languages, especially in Central Cushitic (Agaw) , partially in
Eastern Cushitic. Here, the fact that a subordinate clause performs
the function of a certain part of the main clause (as above) , is
expressed by the attachment to. the clause of a respective case-mark-
er referring to the subordinate clause's syntactic function in
respect to the main clause. In some languages, relative markers add-
ed to subordinate clauses completely coincide with the nominal
declension, in other languages — only partially, but this is a prob-
lem of the history of each individual language, and does not in-
fluence the theoretical interpretation of this structure.

In Egyptian, a marker of feminine gender is attached to the
verbal stem (preceding the corresponding pronominal possessive
marker expressing the subject), if the verb of the subordinate
clause depends on a feminine noun (as mentioned above, the verbal
stem in question is often a participle by origin). Thus, in the
Indicative sgm-f 'he hears' structurally means '(the one) hearing
(m.) of him' or '(the one) hearing-his' , but in the Subjunctive hn~b
sgm-t-f 'the woman whom he hears' is lit. 'the woman (the one)
hearing (f.) his'. Here we have a complete identity of the verbal and
the nominal construction. The situation with the feminine gender of'
the determinatum in those Cushitic languages, where the nominaliza-
tion of the conjugated verbal form of the subordinate clause is at-
tested, is somewhat different. Here the subordinate clause is con-
sidered as an attribute-adjective, and if it is dependent on a word
of feminine gender in the main clause, the feminine nominal marker
-t is adjoined to the whole clause.

Thus, of the Semitic moods known to us, the Jussive was ori-
ginally a special application of the Old Perfective. The Akkadian
and Ethiopian Subjunctive (and the New Central Semitic Imperfective,
originating from it) seems to be the result of a nominalization of
the conjugated verbal form by its declension in a subordinate
clause — a phenomenon well known to us in the ancient ergative
languages. As to the Arabic Subjunctive in -a, for intentional
clauses, it is a form parallel with the locative object marker -a.
(Let me remind the reader that with verbs of motion the locative is
expressed by the accusative in -a.) In other words, it is evident
that there were no moods in Proto— Afrasian, but only nominal cases
(or, otherwise , postpositive markers, which is, in principle, the same)
which were attached to nour.3 as well as to phrases and to comple-

7-4 287

103

mentary, attributive and adverbial subordinate clauses, depending
on their functions as parts of the main clause. This situation is
still attested in Agaw and some other/languages .

5.13. On the grounds of what was said above it can be seen that
the Afrasian verb did not, as is the case in many other language
families, accumulate specific markers of locative28 or modal cha-
racterization of the action.

Afrasian word-formation practically lacks, at least in the
historically documented period, such means of widening lexical
semantics of verbal roots as word-compounding29 (except reduplica-
tion) , or various prefixes of a prepositional origin, indicating
the direction of action, etc.

But another means of widening the semantic possibilities was
evolved in the Afrasian verb. It is usually called, in the Western
schools of Semitology, "verbal stems", or "modifications". The term
"verbal stem" is unfortunate, because what j. s meant is not a single
stem, but a paradigm. In the Russian linguistic tradition the term
poroda is used, a translation of the Latin stirps which was nau'
formerly widely used in the European grammars of Semitic languages
as a rendering of the traditional Arabic grammatical term nau' .

The stirpes are derivative lexico-grammatical formations
modifying original verbal semantics of action or state as to its
qualitative, quantitative or directional characteristics. Partially
they correspond to voices (causative, medial, reflexive), but they
do not include the principal voices: Active and Passive: the two
latter are either lacking entirely in the Afrasian languages, or
are present as secondary forms in the framework of the paradigm of
any stirps.

Each stirps evolves a full paradigm of verbal forms, parallel
to the paradigm of the primary verbal form (stirps): Perfective,
Imperfective, name or names of action ( masdars , infinitives), par-
ticiples of action and state (later — active and passive partici-
ples), etc.

The principal means of stirps derivation in Afrasian languages
are: 1) reduplication (gemination) of the whole root or of its part
(stirpes of the D-type); 2) affixation of the markers: 8- (stirpes
of the S-type) , m-/n- (stirpes of the M-/N-type) , and t- (stirpes
of the T-type) . In the atirps-formation, the vocalization patterns of
the different paradigmatic forms are different from those of the
principal G stirps.30 Still other stirpes do exist, as e.g. such
that are formed by means of a special structure of vocalization
(infixation), viz. by infixation of -ai-, -au-, -a- (stirpes of
the A-type) as well as stirpes combining two or more types (S+T,
T+N, S+D, D+T, etc.).

The semantics of the individual stirpes may vary in the dif-
ferent languages and groups of languages. But it is possible to
mark out certain main semantic patterns inherent in the different
types of the stirpes.

The stirpes of the D-type (reduplicated) usually denote an
action as either intensive, or iterative, factitive, declarative
or causative. Reduplication is widely used (in connection with the
factitive semantics of this stirps) for the derivation o£_denomina-
tive verbs. In Semitic languages the stirpes based on full and even

104

partial reduplication of the stem are infrequent (but they are char-
acteristic of Cushitic, partly of Berber and Chadic languages);
instead, a stirps with a reduction of the stem reduplication to a
gemination (or rather lengthening) only of the second (sometimes
the third) radical consonant is widely used. Forms with this or sim-
ilar "reduced" reduplication are used in Egyptian and Berber for
expressing a third aspect (alongside of Punctual and Cursive) —
namely Habitative, and are included into the paradigm of any stirps,
including the primary one.

Stirpes of the S-type denote the action mostly as causative
(incitement to action), sometimes as factitive (action causing a
state) and declarative. In Somali, Hausa, etc. the affix *s- is
present in the form of a suffix -a.

Stirpes of the N-/M-type have reflexive (and reciprocal) sem-
antics; later they evolve in the direction of Passive. In Old
Egyptian n- is attested almost exclusively as a means of lengthen-
ing biconsonantal roots (thus sometimes also in Semitic) . In Ber-
ber and Cushitic the stirpes of the M-type are commonly used
instead of the stirpes of the N-type, i.e. as reflexive and reciproc-
al stirpes (in the Semitic languages the marker mV— is widely used
only in the formation of verbal nouns, but not finite verbal forms).

Stirpes of the T-type (with the prefixation, later also quite
often infixation, and in Cushitic, Berber and Chadic also suffixa-
tion of the marker -t-) originally denotated, as it seems, changes
in the direction of action, and this was the basis for the develop-
ment of reflexive and reciprocal semantics.31 In Aramaic, the wide-
ly spread stirpes of the T-type gradually acquire passive semantics.
In Akkadian an aspectual form — the so-called "Perfect" — is evolv-
ed on the base of the verbal form with the infix -t—. At first it
expressed sequence of actions, and later this form supplanted the
form of the old Perfective in the Indicative. In Egyptian only some
relics of stirpes of the T-type are attested; but in Berber, verbal
forms with the affix -t- play a very important role. It seems that
habitative forms (denoting usual or constant actions) and passive
forms evolve here on the basis of the same original sequential
denotation. The generally intransitive semantics of the T-forms
induced the formation of a secondary Imperfective of the intransitive
verbs. In the Cushitic languages, forms of the T-type often have re-
flexive semantics, which later evolve into a general intransitive
voice and into a passive.

The stirpes of the A-type are less widely spread. These stirpes
were perhaps originally used as conative (indicating purpose) , but
later they were used with other connotations. They are typical of
Berbero-Libyan and Southern Semitic languages, rare in North-Centr-
al Semitic, and are completely absent in Akkadian. In Cushitic lan-
guages they have a tendency to supplant the stirpes of the D-type.

Various means of stirps-formation may combine; in particular,
the T-type is often combined with the D- and S-types in order to
denote a reflexive of the iterative, causative etc. connotation. 32

It is worth noting that languages using those types of
conjugated verbal forms, which evolved later, often still
preserve the stirpes affixes, at Feast some of them, but these
affixes are suffixed, not prefixed as before (Cushitic verbs of

105

the new conj ugational patterns, Chadic and partially Berber verbs).
Some traces of suffixation of the stirps markers may be found also
in the Semitic languages, as well as in Egyptian.

All stirps prefixes have pronominal (deictic) origin.

The origin of the aspectual and other forms in the framework
of the derivative stirpes paradigms, as well as of their vocaliza-
tion patterns, is even less studied than the same problem for the
main stirps (G).

Derivative stirpes do not possess specific inflexional markers
of transitivity and intransitivity (similar to the differences in
vocalization of the primary stirps forms ’i-prws, ’ i-sdi-h , ’i-mrus,
’i-Zmad, cf. above). This stands probably in connection with the
fact that originally certain of the stirpes were always transitive,
and the others, on the contrary, were always intransitive. The Per-
fective and the Imperfective were originally formed from the pat-
terns -p(a)vis and -p(a)ras respectively; the New Central Semitic
Perfective of denominative origin is everywhere formed from the pat-
terns p(a)ras(a )/q(a) tal(a) .

We have seen above that the personal subject verbal marker had
possibly two vocalization patterns: ia- for transitive and ■pu/'L-
for intransitive verbs. Contrary to this rule, in the majority of
Semitic languages the D-, £- and A-stirpes (usually transitive)
have the -pu- vocalization, and reflexive stirpes, the %a- pattern
(in Akkadian ‘ u- and *■£- correspondingly). The personal marker of
the passive conjugation is vocalized as 33

The original paradigm of derivative stems (at least in Proto-
Semitic) was as follows:

Perfective-Jussive

Imperfective

D

S

N

T

*£u-parrisa
*iu-§a-p ( a) vis
*ia-n-par-LS
*ia-t-parisb

*iu-parrasa
*yu.-sa~p ( a )ras
*£a-n-paras
*i-a-t-parasb

Notes: a. The gemination of the second radical in stems of the
D-stirps -qparris, -parras is of an origin different from the gemina-
tion in the Imperfective form ’i^parras of the Akkadian G-stirps,
and, by analogy, of the Imperfective of the N- and T-stirpes: *ja-n-
pawas > *ippapras; *ia-p-ta-ras > ’ip-ta-rras. In the D-stem the
gemination results from a reduction of the reduplication *-paras-
paras-, in the G-stem it is probably the result of an accent pat-
tern: * ’-paras > -parras. There is a great diversity among the
D-type stirpes, cf. Arabic ia-qtall-, Berbero-Libyan i-farurss, etc.

b. In the T-stirps a metathesis with the infixation of -t- is
possible: *ia-*p-ta-vis , *£a-p-ta(p)ras (but cf. also note 31).

In Semitic languages, excepting Akkadian, the new Perfective
with the stem *p(a)rasa — *q(a)tala has in the derivative stirpes
supplanted the old one, and the Perfective with the suffix -u
(Subjunctive mood) has supplanted the old Imperfective. The reasons
were the same as in the basic stirps. (However, in some languages,
as e.g. in Arabic, the —a— vocalization is preserved in the D+T
stirpes) :

106

Perfective

D *qattala

S *sa-q ( a) tala

*na-q(a)tala 1

* (i)n-qatala *

*ta-qatala 1
*(h)it-qatala *
*ta-qattala 1

* (h)-i(t)-qattala

Imperfective

*iu-qattil-u
*£u-$a-q ( a) til-u

*j,a-n-qatil^u.

*j-a-ta-qati l-u

Ha-t-qatil-u

Ha-ta-qattilu

*i-a-t-qattal-u, and so forth.

Note. The T-stirps, as a result of metathesis and infixation of
-t-, develops the forms: (i.) q-ta-tala, a-q-ta-til-u .

The stirpes in the other Afrasian languages have not yet been
sufficiently studied.

REFERENCES

1 Originally the Afrasian verb had no tenses. This fact is
usually pointed out in the grammars. However, it does not prevent
the grammarians from denoting Afrasian aspectual forms as "tenses"
(according to a tradition, dating from the 17th century and being
the result of a mechanical transference of the categories of Latin
grammar to other languages) .

2 In Cushitic languages there is only one pattern of prefixal

ccnjugation of transitive verbs in the Punctual As

it will be shown in detail below, in Semitic and possibly also in
the Berber languages there was a distinction between fully transi-
tive verbs, verbs of superficial, external or transient effects and
intransitive or medial verbs. The verbs of motion were considered
as verbs of action, and the place or direction of movement was re-
garded as the direct object of the action. This classification later
ceased to be observed strictly, as a result of several causes — par-
ticular (e.g. phonotactical) as well as general — first of all,
because of the typological restructuring of the language when the
opposition 'action vs. state' was replaced by the opposition 'transi-
tivity vs. intransitivity', and, later on, with the emergence of
voices, tenses, etc.

3 The form of the Jussive is used in Akkadian only in combina-
tion with praecative and prohibitive particles, and also in condi-
tional sentences where the grammars usually subsume it under Per-
fective. However, the Jussive is well attested in many other Semit-
ic languages as an independent verbal category. The Berbero-Libyan
Jussive coincides with the Perfective; in Cushitic, forms of secon-
dary origin are used.

4 From the point of view of Akkadian grammar, the predicate of
state is, structurally and functionally, rather a nominal than a
verbal form — a feature of deep archaism.

b As well as in Aujfila and some other dialects. In other Ber-
ber languages the part of the Qualitative is played by the old verb-
al form of intransitive action, usually with the development of

107

the second stem vowel *a > *a > a, owing to some older prosodic
phenomena.

6 However, it is necessary to point out that J . Kurylowicz , who
put forward this theory in 1958 [Kurylowicz 1958] , gave it up with-
out sufficient justification in his latest book [Kurylowicz 196l].
There he did not take into consideration the data of other Afrasian
languages, what is, as we believe, a methodological mistake. That
is why, despite all i'ts consequency, the second theory of Semitic
apophony, proposed by J. Kurylowicz, excites certain doubts, espe-
cially as regards relative chronology of the emergence of some lin-
guistic phenomena.

7 O.Rossler had in mind Berber verbal forms of the pattern
i-farras (Duratives) . But this observation of his should be correct-
ed. It is true that the Berber intransitive verbs do not have the
form i-farras , but the reason of this is, that the latter is not
the ancient Imperfective but originally the verbal D-Stirps (cf.
below), which is always transitive by definition. Besides, as it
seems, in Mahrl at least a part of intransitive verbs (verbs of
state) also possess a fully vocalized Imperfective.

8 Thus, the situation is identical, e.g., in such archaic lan-
guages as Sumerian and Elamite, where the verb of action has two
aspects, while the predicate o-f state is devoid of aspectual opposi-
tions .

9 The opposition between perfective and jussive lay probably
in the stress or tone.

10 We leave aside the question of the vocalism of the first
syllable, and conventionally mark the vowel by the F-sign. Probably,
this vowel could be not only *i but also *u; < *8 in both cases.

11 In Ethiopian, as well as in Akkadian, the form ia-qattal
spread also to intransitive verbs in the Imperfective; both forms
of the Jussive, *ia-prus and *i V-pras , were preserved.

12 However, it is important to take into consideration that
vocalic phonemes i and u are both, as it, seems, reflexes of a single
Proto-Afrasian phoneme * 3 .

13 However, it is possible that the prefixed forms of the
finite verb never existed in Omotic, and that the Omotic suffixal
conjugation (where it survives) is a relic either of the ancient
stative type conjugation, or of secondary forms developed from
auxiliary verbs with suffixal conjugation.

14 We cite only the form of the Imperfective (and Jussive)
for Arabic (here and below), because Arabic Perfective is of a
later and secondary origin.

16 Later on fibZat > ’ ibtut . Since the Imperfective, as it
seems, is a secondary category for intransitive verbs.it did not
preserve in Akkadian any other vocalization, except the one trans-
ferred to them by analogy trom the transitive verbs of motion and
medial verbs.

16 One should not confuse Central and Southern Semitic "Per-
fect" '(= Perfective with suffixed conjugation, emerged from the
Stative) with the Akkadian "Perfect" (a form based on the Imper-
fective with an infix' -t-, which originally expressed the sequence
of action, and later on supplanted the old Akkadian Perfective,
also traditionally called "Preterite" (it was discussed above).

108

17 Examining the place of the Akkadian Stative in the Common
Afrasian grammatical structure, we should not compare the Cushitic
"weak verbs", not only because they possess no common functions
with the Stative, being a conjugational system which includes all
tense and aspect forms, but also because their formal affinity with
the Akkadian Stative is illusory. The only feature they have in
common is, that they both have a suffixal conjugation. The verbvm
substantivum in Bedawye only accidentally resembles the Akkadian
Stative both in form and function: it is a verbal noun with a con-
jugated copula. Other Cushitic verbal forms of suffixal conjugation
are of a similar origin. Only the 'dependent' forms of the Sidamo
languages are directly related to the Afrasian Stative.

18 According to a general rule, the short vowel is elided when
preceding the accentuated syllable, therefore, the 3rd p. sing, is
parts but the 1st p. sing, is pars-aku.

19 Proceeding from the Akkadian patterns, it would be natural
to suppose that the form *martSa should be transitive, and *karuma,
*qatala intransitive. But semantic patterns of the different vocalic
types do not coincide in all details in the various Semitic langua-
ges.

20 It is not attested in all Semitic languages, thus, e.g.,
Hebr. qa^al 'he has killed' is a reflex of *qatat but not of qatala.

21 There can be no doubt of the possessive origin of the Old
Egyptian verbal construction. Therefore, the hypothesis of O.Ross-
ler, who explained the suffixal pattern of Old Egyptian conjuga-
tion by a simple inversion of the subject marker because of an al-
leged rearrangement of the sentence word-order, is completely un-
acceptable. Besides, from the morphological point of view Old
Egyptian subject suffixes have nothing in common with Proto-Afras-
ian verbal subject prefixes.

22 In this we disagree with W.Westendorf . In Afrasian langua-
ges, the participles, as a rule, are aspectless. It is probable
that forms like mrr were participles of continuous action or state
(Habitative, Durative). This is corroborated by the further semant-
ic development of this form, as well as by parallels in Berber
morphology (cf. above, on the Berber form i-farrss) .

23 A certain tendency of such development, which is also
observed in the Akkadian Stative, is, without any doubt ,' rather
late, and is connected with the general transition from the ergative
(or possessive) to the nominative construction, which was followed
by changes in the role of transitivity, and in the character of

the aspect and tense system in the framework of the verbal structure
as- a whole. This tendency can take place only when the structure
as it is historically documented had already been formed.

24 We must remind that Eg. -f < Afras. exactly as Chad.

SU.

25 Thus, the Passive Perfective is quitla. Passive Imperfect-
ive — tu-qtal-u. Passive Participle — ma-qtul-M-n , etc.

26 It is generally accepted that Ethiopian is less archaic
than the old Southern Arabian languages, in which a Passive already
did exist. But after the latest publications by R.Hetzron there is
no reason to consider proto-Ethiopian to be less archaic than,i.e.,
Sabaean. The isogloss of Passive never reached it.

109

27 A direct negation is expressed by a negative Imperfective .

28 Such markers are, however, attested in some Chadic langua-
ges, possibly under the influence of a substratum.

29 ■ More widely than in Semitic, was word-compounding spread

in Prot.o-Berbero— Libyan, in Chadic, and, to a lesser degree, in the
other African Afrasian branches.

,0 From German Grundstamm. Otherwise it is denoted as the B
stirps (Basie).

31 R.Hetzron seems to be of the opinion that the stirpes with
t- as a suffix, and -t- as an infix have a different origin, and
consequently have a different history of semantic development.

32 The stirpes are marked here as suggested by W. von Soden
for Akkadian. These designations may be applied without further com-
ments to any Afrasian language. In Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic gram-
mars traditional designations, introduced by medieval scholars and
based on the patterns of the verb *p'l are used: Hebrew pi' 'el (D) ;
po'al (A), hiph'i 1 (3), niph' at (N)3 hithpa' ' el (T+D). The G stirps
is marked as "light" (qal) ; in Aram, po'al (G), pa" el (D), haph' el,

’ aph'el (S), (h)ithpo'al (T), (h)ithpa"el (T+D). In Arabic, Roman
numeration is used: I (G) , II (D) , III (A), IV (S) , V (T+D), VI
(T+A), VII (N) , VIII (T) , IX (variant of D) , X (S+T) , etc. In Ethiop-
ian the stirpes are usually marked by Roman numbers with an addi-
tional Arabic number for the element ~t~.

33 There is reason to believe that the prefixed subject markers
originally were either accented: *’ia-, or non-accented: *po-, the
latter variant later developing into pi- and pu-.

CHAPTER SIX

SOME DATA ON THE SYNTAX

§ 1. Word order

6.1.1. It is usual to define the word order in a language by a
formula consisting of the terms V(erb) , S(ubject), and O(bject).

For Afrasian the order V — S— 0 is thought to be the original. In-
deed, this order is regarded as normal in Egyptian and in Semitic
(Arabic, Hebrew, and others), its reversion in case of expressive
emphasis being the more common exception. The divergent word order
in Akkadian (S— 0 — V) is considered to have arisen under the influ-
ence of the Sumerian substratum; note however that the pronominal
object, in distinction from the nominal one, everywhere follows the
verb as a clitic. The same languages display the attributive con-
struction usually in the order D(eterminatum) — A(ttribute) . But in
Cushitic and Chad ic the word order is usually different: S— 0— V
and S— V — 0. The attributive construction in some of these langua-
ges shows the order A— D.

However, if in Proto-Afrasian we deal with an ergative type of
language, these formulas do not apply. The components of the predi-
cative sentence in such languages are the subject of action (Sa) ,
the subject of state, including what in nominative type languages
is the direct object (Ss) , and the predicate (P) , either verbal or
nominal .

6.1.2. It is possible to establish the relative chronology of
the different types of word order in the sentence if we compare
them with the structuring of the verbal, word-forms . In the SCB group
the subject of the verb of action is represented by a prefixed per-
sonal marker —which, undoubtedly, derives from an independent pro-
noun in the oblique (ergative) case, denoting the subject of the
action (Sa) ; the object of the action is represented by an enclitic
pronoun (Ss) ; thus the verbal form itself represents a phrase with
the order Sa — P — Ss (=0). We can infer that the reason for this is
that in the proto-language in question the subject of action preced-
ed the predicative word, and the latter was followed by the subject
of the state = object. In other words, the 'Arabic' word order was
not the original in Afrasian, or at least in the SCB languages. The
contradiction between the structure of the verbal form, which also

111

in historical Semitic languages retains the now fossilized formula
Sa — P — Ss (= 0), and the structure of the whole sentence which is
formed according to the formula V=(Sa — P— 0) — S (nominal) — 0
(nominal) reflects an inner syntactical development of this group
of languages.

In the Stative, regarded as a predicative phrase, the original
order is, quite logically, P— Ss. It is clear that the prototype
of the Ss morpheme was a pronoun in the direct case, and if the
subject was a noun, the corresponding formula would still be P— S,
with the predicative noun in the direct case. The phrase could be
regarded as an appositional attributive one, where both components
possess equal valence. This is why (as we have seen above, § 5),
the direct case pronoun could also be regarded as a pronominal
predicative copula, and the predicate as the subject; cf. the
copula-morph (?) -j following the pronominal morph in the Egyptian
'qualitative-stative' .

It is well known that in Egyptian the predicate of the action
was expressed by an attributive or a prepositional phrase; it must
also be kept in mind that, as a rule,- the Afrasian prepositions
derive from nouns and usually govern the genitive, and thus, the
prepositional phrase still remains a variety of the attributive one.
The subject of the action is expressed by a possessive (genitival)
pronoun or by a noun in the genitive following the predicate-deter-
minatum.

This shows, by the way, that there is a certain affinity in
Afrasian languages between the subject of action (Sa) and the at-
tribute (A) , as well as between the predicate (P) and the determi-
natum (D) . Hence the original word order Sa — P corresponds to the
order A — D in the attributive phrase. But this is exactly the si-
tuation in Chadic according to the explanation of the Western Chad-
ic verbal structure suggested by P. Newman and R.Schuh, and the
Western Chadic word order may thus be regarded as the original.

Like the Egyptian, the Chadic predicate is expressed by an attribu-
tive ‘or a prepositional phrase, but the attribute takes the first
place and the determinatum (the predicative word) occupies the fin-
al position.

The reversion of the components of the attributive phrase in
Egyptian and in Semitic corresponds to the reversal of the structure,
in Egyptian, of the verbal form (itself one case of the attribu-
tive phrase), and, in Semitic, of the structure of the verbal sen-
tence (but not of the structure of the verbal form itself) .

§ 2. Varieties of attributive phrase

6.2.1. While discussing the attributive phrase in Afrasian we
have been paying attention only to its simplest variety.

In practice we are confronted with several different possibili-
ties in these languages:

(a) The determinatum (in the st.aonstruatus) immediately pre-
cedes the attribute in the genitive case (if this attribute is a
noun); when the attribute is an adjective, the determinatum
in the full form of the st. reatus (and when the case inflexion is

112

lost — of the st. absotutus) precedes it, and there is concord in
gender, number and case (Akk. iiarad sarr-i-m 'king’s slave'; nard-u-m
ken-u-m 'faithful slave');

(b) The determinatum in the full form precedes the attribute
standing in the genitive case, but they are connected through a
nota genitivi. If the latter can be declined, it agrees with the
determinatum in gender, number and case. This type of attributive
phrase is very ancient, since one and the same nota genitivi n is
present in Berbero-Libyan, Egyptian, and Chadic. It must be noted,
however, that in Semitic and Cushitic the nota genitivi is derived
from other pronominal stems, cf. in the case of a nominal attribu-
te: Eg. mr n Pth 'beloved which (of=by the god) Ptah'; Hausa kane-n
mutum '(younger)-brother-which(of) man' = 'the man's younger brother';
Old Akk. uard-u-m du sarr-i-m 1 (Babylonian [u]ardu sa garri M)
'slave who (m.) king’s' = 'the king’s slave'; ’ am-t-u-m ea-t sarr-
i-m 'slave-girl who (f.) king’s' = ' the king’s slave-girl'. In the
case of the attributive adjective: Berber Kabyle sin i-rgaz-3n d-i-
fqir-3n 'two men which-poor-pl . 1 = 'two poor men'; Chad. Hausa
kane-n nan 'younger-brother-which this' = 'this yonger brother'.

(c) When the attribute must be semantically emphasized it is
moved to the front (usually with the nota genitivi) , and the determ-
inatum is accompanied by a 'catching-up' pronominal suffix which
indicates the attribute. Another possibility is applied when

the determinatum remains in its place but is accompanied by the
'catcher-up' pronoun: Akk. Sa sarri kalab-su 'which (the) king’s,
his dog'; Aram, kalb-eh di malk-a 'his dog, of the king' = 'the
king, his dog', 'the king’s dog'.

§ 3. Subordination

6.3.1. During the Ancient stage of development of the Afrasian
languages the dependent (subordinate) clauses were treated as second-
ary parts of the main clause. Depending on their character,
they could function as an attribute, direct or indirect object, or
an adverbial modifier in the main clause. In Akkadian, for instance,
the attributive subordinate clauses were introduced by a noun in
the st. construotus (the form of the determinate noun) or by the
nota genitivi. If a subordinate clause functioned as an indirect
object the attributive phrase of the type (6.2.1 c) was used: uard-
u-m sa ’iqbi’-u '(the) slave who (he-)said' , but uard-u-m sa ’•£-
qbi’-u-sum 'the slave to whom (he-)said', lit. 'slave, who, (he-)
told-him' .’ In some languages (e.g., in Egyptian, some of the Cushit-
ic) , in the case when the determinate noun was feminine, the sub-
ordinate clause had to agree with it in gender; various means were
used for this. The structure of the objective, circumstantial and
other dependent clauses was similar to that of the attributive ones.
Either the whole of the dependent clause (in some Cushitic languages)
or its predicate were accompanied by the marker of the case in which
a noun playing the same role as a member of the main clause would
have been used, i.e., an attributive clause was followed with the
genitive marker, a final clause — with the dative or locative marker,
etc. These case markers later developed into morphemes that denoted

verbal moods (thus in Semitic). However, such categories had almost
completely disappeared after the Middle stage in the Afrasian lan-
guages.

* * *

Above, we have attempted to describe the main features that
characterized the most ancient stage of the Afrasian languages.

It has not been possible to trace the considerable changes that
took place during the period of independent evolution of the
separate branches and, still later, of the individual languages
of this family.

REFERENCE.

1 In the Genitive: uard~i-m. oi Sarr-i-m.

APPENDICES

TEXT SAMPLES

(1) Semitic*

Akkadian

(1) Old Akkadian (Diyala dialect)

(a) e-nu na-bi-u[m\ Su-ut gi-sum il-gi-am-ma it-ba-lu na-bi-um
KA <2tI§PAK it-ma 1 DINGIR-aZ-su DI . TAR 1 DINGIR-cZot su GUD.
GUD PA. RIMi, 1 e-ru-vu su AB+AS URU^ l i-g\u\-num DUMU e-
[ri] i-um l2(?)i AB+As [gi] -sum

(b) en-ma ma-nu—nu a-na gi-nu-nu in £ si us-da-a-bi-la a-na §i-
tim SAM-me lu-Hs-ku-uL-kwn al-kam-ma ba-dam

Transcription: (a) ’enu Nabi’um cut Qisum j.ilqeh-am-
ma iitbal-u, Nabi’um ’abut Ti&pak iitma; ’ Ili-'alsu, daiianum , ’Ill-
dan cu Kuku (?) rabiqum 'Eruru Su sib ’alim, Iikunum mar(i) ' 'Eni’um
Sind siba Qisum.

(b) hen-ma Manunu ’ana Kiriunu:- ’in bet-im ci iusta’pil-a ’ana
sltim slmam-mi lucqul-kum, ’ alk-am-ma bat-am.

Translation: (a) Utensils of Nabi’um, which Qisum
took and carried away. Nabi’um, in the gate of (the god)
Tispak made an oath; (one) ’Ilum'alsu, (was the) judge,
and (one) ’Ilidan (of the family) of Kuku, (was the) at-
torney, ‘Eruru (of the family) of (the) city elder, (and)
Iikunum, son of 'Eni’um, (were) [(the) two] witnesses of
Qisum. _

(b) Thus (saith) Manunu to Kinunu: «In (the) house
which I have caused to be given (as payment?), for the
balance (residue) I shall weigh you out the price; come
here and stay overnight » .

* Only a minimum of text samples in Semitic languages is
presented. For more material, see G.Bergstrasser . Einfuhrung in
die semitischen Sprachen. Miinchen T928.

8-2 287

115

Not e s :

* enu probably for '-inti, pi. of ’ini- 'utensil'.
out relative pronoun m. pi .nom. , denoting possession.
ii-lqeh-am-ma 3rd p.m.sg. Perfective + Ventive ( = 1p.sg.
of the dative pronoun) + enclitic conjunction -ma. Verb
Iqh ' to take ' .

ii-tbal-u 3rd p.m.sg. Perfective, subjunctive mood.

Verb tbl 'to carry away'.

’abul st.constr. of * abull-um 'gate'. Borrowing. The
word is in the Accus . loci.

Tispak name of a deity.

ii-trria 3rd p.m.sg. Perfective of the verb tm’ 'to
swear ' .

’Ili-'al-Su proper name meaning 'my god (is) over him'.
daiiamm nomen professionis from the verb dpi 'to judge
righteously' .

’Ili-dan proper name meaning 'my god is strong' ( dan
stativej .

ou relative pronoun m. sg.nom. denoting possession.

The following name in the nominative is that of the fa-
mily head or ancestor.

rabi&um part, actionis of the verb rbq 'to lay in
wait, to lay down (of animals), to represent in court',
etc .

sib st.constr. of Stbum 'old man, elder; witness'.

Dual Siba.

en-ma particle introducing direct quotations (< ’in- +
conjunction or emphasizing particle -ma) .

’ana preposition 'to'.

’in particle ' in’ .

betum 'house', genitive sg.

oi relative pronoun m. denoting possession, genitive
in concord with betim .

iu-s-ta-’ pil-a S-stirps (causative), 3rd p. m. sg. Per-
fective + -a dialectal suffix of the subjunctive (?)
mood. Verb ’pi (or ’hi, hence translation uncertain).

lu-bqul-kum 1st p.sg. Praecative (= Jussive + affirma-
tive particle lu-) of the verb &ql 'to weigh' + dative
enclitic personal pronoun of the 2nd p.m.sg.

* alk-am-ma 2nd p.m.sg. Imperative of the verb * hlk 'to
go' + am dative enclitic personal pronoun of the 1st p.
sg. (= ventive) + enclitic conjunctiqn -ma.

batam or badam is the same verbal form, presumably
meaning 'to spend the night'.

(2) Old Babylonian (Laws of Hammurapi, § 3), Trans-
cript ion:

sum-ma ’a^n-lum ’ ina drnim ’ ana sibut oarratim ’oqi’armd, ’auat
‘iqbu la ’uktin, —sum-ma dinum su din napistim, ’ay,ilum su ’iddak.

(3> Literary "Young Babylonian" (The Epic of Gilgames,
VIII, 1 ff.). Transcription:

anaku amat^ma ul ki Enkidu-ma? nicoatu iterub ana karSi-ia,
niuta apla]}-ma, arappud qera; ana lit Utnapisti, mar Ubar-Tutu, ur-

116

ha oabtaku-ma, hantls allak before vowel probably lost only

in spelling) .

Translation:

(1) If a man at a trial appears for false evidence
(= in order to present a false evidence) , and does not
substantiate the word he has spoken, - (then) , if the
trial is a trial of life (and death), this man shall be
killed.

(3) (Even) I, shall I not die too, just as Enkidu?
Sorrow has entered into my stomach, I have become afraid
of death, and I run (over) the steppe; to the powerf?)
of Utnapisti , the son of Ubar-Tutu, I make (my) way, hur-
riedly I go.

Notes:

sum-ma 'if'; Common Semitic *sln/m 'if ' + enclitic con-
junction -ma.

• aull - n. subst. m. 'man'; N.Sg. with mimation ’ayn-lum.

NB: all words beginning with a' vowel have in reality an
’ -Anlaut not reproduced below!

ina preposition.

din- n. subst. m. 'justice', here 'trial'; N.Sg. with
mimation dlnum, G. dlnim, St.constr.N. din.

ana preposition.

.slbut- n. subst , f . , abstract noun in -ut- from *Slb-/

*slb - 'gray-haired, old', 'elder, witness'; St.constr.
slbut.

earr- .n.adj. 'false'; f. used as abstrect noun 'lie'.
G.Sg.f. with mimation cavratim ; lit. 'evidence of lie'.
dol’amma < *£a-u.£i’-am-ma 3rd p.m. Sg. Jussive from root id
'to go out' + "ventive suffix -am (originally suffixed
pronoun of the 1st person of the indirect obj ect) + encli-
tic conjunction -ma. .

ay.at- (root *hui) n. subst. f. 'word'. St. const, ayat;
the Status constructus here introduces a subordinate
clause .

■i-a'Ht < *ia-qbi(’ )-u 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective Subjunctive
fr root \b£ 'to say'.

i,d r-ogation.

vktln < *iu-k-ta-’ in 3rd p.m. Sg.« Perfect», Stirps D,
root *kun 'to be constant'. The use of the «Perfect» (in-
fix - ta- -) denotes that the action has been perfected
after another action (here iqbu ) .

napis-t n. subst. f. 'soul, life'; G. with mimation napis-

u demonstrative pronoun (also personal pronoun, 3rdp.
'■ l'g-); < *ou.

Iddak < Ha-n-du’ak 3rd p.m. Sg. Imperfective , Stirps N
v reflexive) from root .’-;k 'to kill'.

anaku 'I' (emphatieal ;y stressed).

amdt-ma < *a-mu,at-ma Is* p. bg. Tmperfective from root
'■miit 'to die' + enclitic conjunction -ma.

ul negation.

kl preposition 'as, like'.

8-3 287

117

Enkidu borrowed proper name, indeclinable (Genitive! )+
enclitic conjunction -ma (here in the sense 'just as E'.
«Long» -a due to interrogation).

nice-at- n.subst.f. 'sorrow', N . nioaatu. The mimation
has been lost at this period.

iterub < *ya-y -ta-rub , 3rd p.m. Sg. « Perfect » from root
*yrb 'to enter', denotes action perfected after the pre-
ceding (sc. Enkidu imiit 'E. died').

karS- n.subst.m. 'stomach'; karSi-ia G.St. pron. + suf-
fixed possessive pronoun of the 1st person -ia.
ntut- < *ma%t- n.subst. 'death'; Acc. rmita.
aplafy-ma 1st p. Sg. Perfective transitive from root
*plh 'to be afraid; to revere' (a instead of u due to
influence of A) + enclitic conjunction.

arappud 1st°p. Sg. Imperfective from root *rpd (verb
of motion, construed with Acc.) .

ger- n.subst.m. 'steppe', Acc. gera. Root *gahr.
lit- n.subst.f., St.constr. lit.

UtnapiSti, Ubar-Tutu, proper names, indeclinable.
mar- < *mar’~ n. subst .m. 'son', St.constr. mar.
urfy- n;subst.m. 'way', Acc. loci urha.
aabtaku-ma 1st p.Sg Stative from root *gbt to take, to
hold, here in an active sense, hence construed with dir-
ect object: 'I have taken the way and still keep to it'.
Enclitic conjuction -ma , probably inducing «length» of
the preceding vowel.

hantis < *ljamt-is adverb formed with Dative-Locative
ending’ -is from adjective hamt- 'quick, speedy'.

allak « *a-’hallak ) 1st p“. Sg. Imperfective from root
*(h)lk 'to go' .

Arabia

(N.V.Jusmanov. Stro£ arabskogo iazyka. Leningrad 1 938 , p. 51)

qadima ’ila Ma' ni bni Za’idata * asra ; fa-’amara Ma' nun bi-
iga'amin, fa-’uhdirat-(i)l^md'idatu ya-'alaj-hd ta'amun; fa- $ta-ma'u
ya-' akalu, ya-Ma'nun fanzuru ’ ila f -him; fa-lamma farayu, qama
ragulun min-hum ya-qala: af-iuha-l-’ amiru, (u)n?ur, ma-da fasna'u
mitlu-ka hi-’ a<j.idfi-hi?" , fa-halla sabila-kum.

"Translation:

(There) arrived prisoners-of-war to Ma'n, son of
Za’idah, and Ma'n ordered to feed (them), and (there)
was brought the table, and food on it; and (the prisoners)
gathered and ate, and Ma'n was watching them; and after
they were ready, a man amongst them stood up and said:

« Oh, (my) lord, look, what (is) it that the like of thee
ought to do to his guests? », and (Ma'n) let them go their
way.

Not e s :

qadima 3rd p.m.Sg. « New Perfective » intransitive
from root *qdm 'to arrive'. A verb standing before its
subject is not in concord with it as to number.

118

'ila preposition ( 'ilai- with suffixed pronoun).

Ma'n- proper name; N. with nunation Ma'nun, G. Ma'ni(n) :
no nunation when determined by an attribute.

(i)bn- n.subst.m. 'son' G.St.constr. (i)bni-.

Za’idatu proper name, diptotic, G.-Acc. Za’idata.

3 asra Pluralis fractus < *3 asraj,u , diptotic (hence with-
out nunation), Sg. ’asir- 'prisoner-of-war'. Root 'or.
fa- conjunction, denotes change of subject.

» amara 3rd p.m. Sg. « New Perfect ive» from root *’mr
'to say, to order' .

bi-\a'amin lit. 'in food', see iga'am^.

'uhdirat 3rd p.f. Sg. « New Perfective» passive , Stirps
S (*s- > ’-) from root *hgr.

ma'id-at- n.subst.f. 'table'; with article, N . al-ma'ida-
tu (no nunation!). The vowel of the article elided,
jza- conjunction.

ealai- preposition (+ suffixed possessive pronoun of
the 3rd p.f. Sg.-7z5).

ta'am- verbal noun from root *t'm 't_o eat, to taste,
to gulp down'; N.Sg. with nunation ta'amun.

(i)§tama'u 3rd p.m. PI. « New Perfective », Stirps T
(reflexive) from root *gm' 'to gather'.

5 akalu 3rd p.m. PI. « New Perfective » from root *’kl
'to eat ' .

ianzuru 3rd p.m.Sg. « New Imperf ective » transitive
from root *ngr 'to look, to watch'.
lemma 'after'.

farayu 3rd p.m. PI. « New Perfective» from root *pr9
'to get ready' .

qama 3rd p.m.Sg. « New Perfective» from root *qam
'to stand up*.

ragul- n.subst.m. 'man'; N. with nunation ra$ulun.
min-hun preposition min 'from' + suffixed pronoun of
the 3rd p.m. PI. -hum.

qala 3rd p.m.Sg. « New Perfective » from root *qul 'to
speak, to say' .

’ aiiuha interjection.

(a)l-‘ amiru n.subst. m.N. with article ' lord' .

(u)nzur Imperative of *n£r 'to look, to watch',
ma-da a combination of two (originally demonstrative)
pronouns .

iasna'u 3rd p.m.Sg. « New Imperfective» transitive (a
due to influence of') from root *gn' 'to do'.

mitl- n.subst.m. 'equation, equivalent'; St. pronomi-
nalis with suffixed possessive pronoun of the 2nd p.m.

Sg. -ka.

bi- preposition.

’adfaf- Pluralis fractus, Sg. daif- 'guest'. Root Vip;
-hi (< -/zu after -i ) suffixed possessive pronoun of the
3rd p.m.Sg.

halla < *halala 3rd p.m.Sg. « New Perfective» transiti-
ve, root *hl 'let go'.

sabil- n.subst.m. 'way'; Acc. loci St. pronominalis
with suffixed pronoun of the 3rd p.m. PI. sabila-him.

8-4 287

119

(2) Berber

Old Libyan (Eastern Numidian)

(Quoted from: A.B .Dolgopol 1 skij . Numidiiskoe (vostocno-
liviiskoe) pis'mo Sevemoi Afriki, in: « Tainy drevnikh
pis'men», Moscow 1 976. Reinterpreted by A. Yu.Militarev).

skn Tbgg bnyfsh Msnsn gldtz wGyy gldtz v>Zllsn sft szbszn-dH^
szgdtz sysH gld Mhrsn sft gldt wFsn gldt mwsnH Snk wBny wSnk dSft
wM. . . wTrikw mssku Mgn. . .

Trans i'ation:

(They) built, (the citizens of) Tabagga, the house
for sacrifice to that Massinissa (the) king, son of Gayy*
son of Zalalsan (the) sufetes, in the year ... (when)
reigned that Micipsa (the) sufetes (and) king, son of
Afsan (the) king; and the «centurions» (were) Sank, son
of Banay, son of Sank, and Safot, son of M..., son. of
Tankaw; (and the) construction supervisor was Magon...

Notes:

sk-n 3rd p.pl. Perfective of the verb sk(w) 'to build'.

Tbgg (< Hamagga) the town of Thugga, modern Dugga, a
site in Tunisia; cf. *wu > bb in Qabyle and some other
modern Berber languages.

bnyfsh: to be divided into three words: bn 'house'; y
preposition (y)i 'for' and /§§(?), possibly the name of
the 'passover-sacrifice ' , borrowed from Hellenistic
Jews, cf. Ti&axa in the Septuagint for Hebrew ps% <
[pesah] . The much-discussed sign we suggest to inter-
pret as from Punic H, to be read, depending on posi-
tion, as [k] or.[k], i.e. [kh] . The Punic sign for
h was originally also used for [h] ; but there was a
need for an extra sign to render the Greek 'chi' and
the Hebrew and early Phoenician h in its pronunciation
[lj] , lacking in the Old Libyan consonantal system. The
contested word fsh(?') must anyway mean some cultic
action. *

Massinissa-n proper name of the famous Libyan king fol-
lowed by the enclitic demonstrative pronoun, cp. Qabyle
-nni 'that, that very, that in question'. According to
O.Rossler, status demonstrativus .

gld-t 2 [a-gallid-at?] f . , lit. 'dignity of an a-gall-'d
(king) ' .

sft borrowing from Phoenician (Punic) stfpet (cp. Hebrew
sbpet 'judge'), Latin su(f) fetes 'consul in Carthage'.

w 'son' (Common Berber *cty.) .

szbsz (<*saiMas) 'year, time, epoch'; n nota genitivi; dH
probably [day] 'during, while'.

820^2 obscure , probably causative in s- (sz- rendering
the voiced variant of the etymological *s- before the
following voiced stop?) of the verb gd (meaning obscure) ;

*■ Cf. Thapsaous , transcription of a toponym in Syria n the
Euphrates, probably < Sem. [tapsahj 'ford'.

120

-t2 (rendering -t in a postvocal position?) being an encli-
tic personal pronoun, 3rd pers.m., sg. of the direct
obj ect .

gld probably Perfective 3rd p.sg. of the verb 'to
reign'.

d- conjunctive particle, Sft here a proper name.
mssku nomen agentis, possibly of the causative stem
of the verb sk(w) 'to build' with a secondary glottaliza-
tion of the causative prefix, i.e. *m-s-£kw 'the one who
makes build', 'supervisor'.

Mgn proper name of Phoenician origin.

Kaby le ( Zouaoua)

(R. Basset. Manuel de langue kabyle. II. Paris 1 887)

nak usal-ay yar u-drar; i-brid-an dir-it an ta-sardun-t in-u up
ta-zmir; a-sif iahmal ; ans-i y y-Talcmnatj batt-iy a-yarum id sin
i-rgaz-an d-i-fqir-an, d-i-msafar-an, y (a) f-i-dar-an'an-san.

Trans lation:

I arrived at a mountain; the roads (were) bad, (so)
my she-mule could not manage; the river was overflowing;

I spent the night in Talammet; I shared the bread with
two men, poor (and) wandering on foot.

Notes:
nak I .

usal-ay 1st p. Sg., root *ysl 'to arrive'. Arabism.
yar preposition (originally noun, hence St. annexus
in' the next word) .

u-drar n. subst .m. Sg . , St. annexus ’mountain1.
i-brid-an n . subst .m . Pi . 1 roads ' .

d- particle before adjectival attribute.
dir-it Qualitative pi. (sg. diri ) 'to be bad'. R. Basset
regarded the following an as part of the Qualitative plur-
al form, but perhaps it should be regarded as a nota gene-
tivi introducing the following subordinate phrase 'my
she-mule not endured-' .

ta-sardun-t n. subst . f. Sg . 'she-mule'. In Kabyle, t cor-
responds to "Common Berber t (but t after n) .

in-u Possessive pronoun of the 1st p.Sg. -u introduc-
ed by nota genitivi (i)n.

a-sif n . subst .n . Sg . , St. liber 'river'.
iahmal Arabism 'was overflowing'.

ans-iy 1st p.Sg. from ans 'to spend the night'. Root

*ms.

° y — preposition (< g-) .

batt-iy 1st p.Sg'., root battu 'to divide'.
a-yarum n. subst. m.Sg., St! 'liber 'bread'.
id preposition.
sin ' two ' .

i-rgaz-an n. subst .m .PI . 'men'.

i-fqir-an, i-msafar-an n . ad j . , Arabisms 'poor', and
'wandering'.

121

Y (a)f- preposition.

i-dav-an n. subst .m. PI . 'feet'.

an-san possessive pronoun of the 3rd p.m.Pl. {nota
genitivi n- + suffixed pronoun) .

Siwa

(E.Laoust. Siwa. Paris 1932)

Commentary by A.Aichenwald

azidi d iVla g adrar, itisu aman; tizmart taVla dday. azidi
yummas: ita hubbasti aman-annao? tizmart twimas: aman d illan
g-'ali, itsggazan yagda. yummas: 'am nuwal nis utnaya, sam aduqqat
taran-annam. tummas: nis n-asaggasa. narrnia umma-nnam namma aha-nnam.
b'adin ioit.

T rans lation:

(The) jackal was in (the) mountain, he was drinking
water; (a) sheep was there. (The) jackal said (to) her:
why (do) you stir (in) my water? (The) sheep said (to)
him: (the) waters are on top, they fall down here. He
said (to) her: last year I was ill (and) you stamped
your feet (making the water turbid) . She said: I (am) of
this year (I am less than one year old). (He said:) (it
may have been) either your mother or your aunt. Then he
ate her.

Not e s :

a-zidi 'jackal', a- an old lexicalized definite arti-
cle .

d existential particle preceeding the verb of existen-
ce in Siwa.

ilia « *y-alla/i ) 3rd p.m.sg. Perfective of the verb
'to be ' .

i-t-isu 3rd p.m.sg. Habitative Imperfective of the
verb 'to drink' .

aman 'water' (pi.); the singular am(a) is almost never
used in Berber.

t-i-zmar-t 'sheep', f. sg. of i-zimmar 'ram'.

t-alla 3rd p. f. sg. Perfective (see above) 'she was'.

y-umm-as 3rd p. m. sg. Perfective of the verb umm 'to
say' + -as enclitic pronoun of the indirect object, 3rd
p.sg. common gender.

hubbas-ti 2nd p. sg. common gender Perfective. The
usual interpretation of this form_ is that of a develop-
ment of the Common Berber *ti-1gubba&-ti , , -t- being an
unmotivated «emphatic » variant of the Afrasian and
Berber -at; similar suffixed forms are known also to oc-
cur with the Imperfective. However, on the analogy of
the inflexion -ay for the 1st p. sg. which is obviously
borrowed from the Stative, the -t in our example is
perhaps better explained as a relic of the Common Berber
Stative, -at in Kabyle .

122

aman-annao 'my water' , annao (< *-anna-u) enclitic poses-
sive pronoun, 1st p. sg.

t-umm-as 'she said (to) him' 3rd p. £. sg. (see above)
i-t-aggaz-an 3rd p. pi. Habitative Imperfective.
nis (< *nik) independent personal pronoun 1st p. sg.
utn-aya 'I was ill', 1st p. sg. Stative- of the verb

utan.

sam (< *kVm) independent personal pronoun 2nd p. f. sg.
tar-an 'feet' (pi.), annam enclitic possessive pronoun
2nd'p. f. sg.

n- nota genitivi, asaggas 'year', -a enclitic demon-
strative pronoun.

ic-it (< *y-ae-it) 3rd p. m. sg. Perfective of the verb
ao 'to eat' + -it enclitic pronoun of the direct object,
3rd p. sg. common gender.

(3) Cushitic
On the verb in Cushitic

In this book we use the terms 'Perfective — Imperfect-
ive' for the sake of uniformity. In Cushitic, the verbal
finite forms are usually classed as 'Past — Non-Past'
(R.Hetzron, A.Zaborski), Perfetto - Imperfetto (M. Moreno),
Perfektum — Prasens (L.Reinisch) .

A.Zaborski, R.Hetzron and others differentiate the fol-
lowing finite verbal forms in Cushitic:

(1) Archaic prefixal Perfective and Inperfective forms
also with infixation and suffixation; preserved only in
some of the most archaic verbs. These forms correspond

to our 'Old Perfective' and 'Old Imperfective' in Semitic,
e.g. in Akkadian;

(2) Common Cushitic suffixal Perfective and Imperfect-

ive forms (R + 'Old' prefixally conjugated auxiliary
verb *’ana or *(h)ai 'to be' > 1st p. sg. -’e, i/-'a , 2nd

p. sg., 3rd p. sg. fern, -te, -ti / -ta, 3rd p. sg. masc.

-i, -0 / -a etc.

(3) Suffixal Perfective and Imperfective forms, having

been innovated in the individual branche-s of Cushitic
from constructions with auxiliary elements other than
*(h)a£, e-g- in Agaw.

In languages which have introduced innovative finite
verbal forms, the Common Cushitic finite verbal forms
are limited to subjoined predicates. In Sidamo, such
forms of the subjoined predicate are partly innovative
(3) , and partly Common Cushitic (2) (= 'Old' prefixal
conjugation of the auxiliary verb developed into a 'New'
suffixal conjugation): 3rd p. sg. masc. -no, 3rd p. sg.
fern, -tu are innovative, but 3rd p. sg. fern, -te is Com-
mon Cushitic (< 'Old' prefixal (?) or even suffixal Per-
fective conjugation).

T.V. I.D.

123

Bedmoye (Had' endawa dialect)

(L . Re inisch . Die Bedauy e-Sprache in Nordost-Afrika. I,

Wien 1895, pp . 56-57)'

(1) Mar 'tad i’bdbia, 'Massir 'ebe, ma'lo tirg’ i'sa’ , So 'dan

’ ebe , Sodanib i'sa' , ^.u-’o'r-uh sl’hiia; 'had’ at da 'ha 'eta: « 'ane
'mhelane?> ’ tene ; te'had'a uo-’or mo’helta , uu-’ or i’ia’ .

(2) Sul'tan 'ife, 'ot ' ibire; tu-’o't-uh 'markab ti ’Ka%,
i’bdbta. Tak 'ekhan sul'tani td-”drt; un u-'tak 'markab dem'a'rab
'sania.

T rans lation:

(1) Martad went away, came to Cairo, dwelled (there
for) two months, came to Sudan, dwelled in Sudan, his
son fell ill: to an old woman! she came, said "I will
treat (him)"; the old woman treated the son, the son
died .

(2) (There) was a sultan, he had a daughter; his
daughter boarded a ship (and) went away. A man fell in
love with the sultan's daughter; this man loaded gold
(into the) ship.

Not e s :

ibabia 3rd p.m. Sg., ibabta 3rd p.f. Sg. Perfective,

« New (weak) conjugations- , verb ibnb 'to travel' < Arab.
hibab; ~ia < *£a-’an; -ta < *ta-’an.

e-be 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective, «01d (strong) conjuga-
tions verb bai 'to come' .
maid ' two ' .

tivga 'months ' , Sg. terig.

i-sa’ 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective, «01d (strong) conjuga-
tions , verb sa’ 'to dwell'.

Sodanib Acc . loci ( -b < *-jya; -y. masculine ending + -a
Acc. ending).

(vl)u N., xo Acc . masculine article.

’or n.subst.m. 'son_'; ’dr-t, ’ot n. subst .f . 'daughter'.
-uh dialectal for -us: suffixed possessive pronoun of
the 3rd p.m. Sg. -s > -h with the connective element -u-.

alhi-£a 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective « New conjugations,
verb leh || alh 'to be or fall ill?'.

had’ a n. subst. 'old man; old woman'; had’at expressing
direction and depending upon an implied verb of motion
expressing direction.
daha postposition.

e-ta 3rd. p.f. Sg. Perfective, « New (weak) conjuga-
tions , verb ii 'to come'; -ta < *ta-’an.

ane mhelane dialectal form for ani mhelani; ani I’, mhela-
ni 1st p. Sg. Imperfective , «New conjugations , verb
mshel; -ani < *a-’ani; mohelta 3rd p.f. Sg. Perfective, <sc New
conj ugation s .

t-ene 3rd p.f. Sg. Imperfective, « Old (strong) con-
jugations, verb an 'to say'.

te-had’a Allegro-form for tu-had’a; twN.,toAcc. femi-
nine article.

124

i-ia' 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective, «01d conj ugation » ,
verb i-a’i ' to die ' .

sultan Arabism, G. sultani.

i-fe 3rd p.m. Sg. , Perfective «01d conjugation» ,
verb fai, hai ~ Sem. *hii.

i-bire , do., verb bari 'to have'.
markab Arabism 'ship'.

ti-hai 3rd p.f. Sg. Perfective, Stirps A, «01d con-
jugation», verb hai 'to dwell' ~ Sem. *hii.
tak n.subst.m. 'man'.

e-khan 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective, «01d conj ugation» ,
verb kehan 'to love'.

un demonstrative pronoun.
dem’ar-ab n.subst.m. Acc . 'gold'.

san~ia 3rd p.m. Sg. Perfective, «New conj ugat ion» ,
'to load' (borrowed? Cf. Arab, za'cma, Mehri Shan ) .

Oramo

(G.B. Gragg. Oromo dictionary. East Lansing, 1 982 , pag.var.)
Commentary by T. Vetoshkina

1 12 3 4 2 3

(1) Miill-i kaleessa daqaa-n na rukut-e sun na iita'-e .

(2) Yoo daak-aa 5 beek-te° daak-tuu jed-am-taB .

( 3 ) Mana adem-nacm 9 raf-i 1 0 .

(4) Bor Wallaggaa-n 11 akka12 deem-u 13 beek-na11* .

(5) Adurre~n-koo15 simbir-oota 16 ari'a-tee 17 naa-ta1B.

(6) Nam-iao-i 19 inni' 0 kaleessa arg-ine21 abbaa-koo-ti22 .

(7) Nam-iac-a1B isa2 3 kaleessa arg-ine 21 an2h im-beek-u25.

(8) Hundee-n 1 muka kana 26 gadi-fagoo-da27 .

(9) Wal2B ga' -anii2B faars-aaB faars-u tur-aniB0.

(10) Gorsa hiriyya kan31 in-fudan-ne 32 hin-fayy-u33 .

(11) Maaliif akka 12 nama jinnii-n1 rukut-e3 goda-tee ?34

(12) Biyya gamoogii-tti 35 gaalaa-n l1 adeem^uu tur-cmi3B.

(13) Abdiisaa-n 1 kaleessa duf-e3 daaltuu-^ni-s3 7 bor hin-duf-ti3 8 .

(14) Man-ni-koo 15 mana-kee-tii-f3 9 mana Gammaecuu gidduu*a

••41

gir-a 1 .

Trans lation:

(1) My foot that a stone hit yesterday has swollen.

(2) If you know how to swim (lit.: know swimming),
you are called a swimmer.

(3) Having come home,, go to sleep (lit.: house having-
come s leep) .

(4) We know that he is going to Wallagga to-morrow.

(5) My cat chases birds (and) eats (them) .

(6) The man we saw yesterday, was my father (lit.:
the-man he yesterday we-saw father-my-is) .

(7) I don't know the man we saw yesterday (lit..: the-
man him yesterday we-saw I don't-know).

(8) The root of this tree goes deep (lit.: below-far-
is) .

125

(9) They got together (and) sang songs (lit.: each-
other having-met-they singing they-sang-continuously) .

(10) One who does not accept the advice of companions
will not prosper (lit.: advice of-comrade who does-not-
accept will-not-prosper) .

(11) Why did you behave like a man struck by a genie?

(12) In the lowlands they used to travel by camel.

(13) Abdisa yesterday came (m.) , (and) Caltu will
come (f.) tomorrow.

(14) My house is between your house and Gammaccu's
house .

Notes:

1. Thematic case. When there is no note defining the
case of the noun, the former should be regarded as Abso-
lute. Moreno and Gragg discern only two nominal cases in
Oromo, the Thematic and the Absolute. Dolgopolsky finds
four, adding the Genitive and Dative, these being dif-
ferentiated from the Absolute case only by tone. Since
the tones are not expressed in the normalized spelling,
we have not attempted to separate these two cases from
the Absolute one.

2. Personal pronoun 1st p.sg., Absolute case ('me, to
me ' ) .

3. Past (Perfective) 3rd p.sg.masc.

4. Demonstrative pronoun of the far deixis ('that').

5. Nomen actionis.

6. Past (Perfective) 2nd p.sg.

7. Nomen actoris.

8. Passive M-stirps (~m~) Non-Past (Imperfective) 2nd

p.sg.

9.

Gerund in - naan which expresses an action preceding

the main one.

10. Imperative 2nd p.sg.

11. Instrumental case (in (4) has the meaning of a
Directive case) .

12. Subordinative conjunction of a wide meaning range
( 'that ' , ' as ' etc . ) .

13. Subjunctive (Dolgopolsky ' s Cohortative) 3rd p.sg.

masc .

14. Non-Past (Imperfective) 1st p.pl.

15. -koo pronominal possessive suffix 1st p.sg. ('my,
mine ' ) .

16. -oota nominal plural morph.

17. Converb 3rd p.sg. fern.; formed from the Perfective
by lengthening the final vowel; used to express coordina-
tion or subordination.

18. Imperfective (Present) 3rd p.sg. fern.

19. -ice- Common Cushitic singulative morph, in Oromo
used for definite nouns.

20. Personal pronoun 3rd p.sg.masc.. Thematic case.

21. Past (Perfective) 1st p.pl.

22. -ti uninflected copula used after a possessive
pronoun (otherwise -da, cf. (8)).

126

23. Personal pronoun 3rd p.sg.masc.. Absolute case.

24. Personal pronoun 1st p.sg., Thematic case.

25. Negation in the Non-Past is expressed by a combina-
tion of the negative morph . ( hin-, in-, im- depending on po-
sition) with the Subjunctive; here the verb is in the 1st
p.sg.

26. Demonstrative pronoun of the near deixis ('this').

27. -da uninflected copula.

28. Reciprocal preverb ('each other').

29. Subjunctive 3rd p.pl.

30. tur- one of the auxiliary verbs used for building
compound verb forms. Here the combination of the Non-
Past of the main verb with the Past of the auxiliary tur-
yields a Durative Past.

31. Relative ('which', 'that') derived from the demon-
strative pronoun; as can be seen from (1), (6), (7), it
alternates with the 3rd p. personal and demonstrative pro-
nouns .

32. Negation in the Past and in subordinate clauses

is expressed by the confix (h)in- -ne.

33. On negation in the Non-Past see n. 25.

34. Past (Perfective) 2nd p.sg.; lengthening of the
final vowel is due to the interrogative intonation.

35. Locative case.

36. A combination of the Infinitive with the Past
(Perfective) of the auxiliary tur- yields a Habitual
Past.

37. -s coordinative conjunction (' and '); Thematic
case .

38. The Non-Past (Present) indicator hin- is used
when the verb has no explicit direct object; it dif-
fers only accentologically from the negative morph.

39. -kee pronominal possessive suffix, 2nd p.sg , , -tii
Possessive case marker, -f Dative case marker.

40. Noun in postpositional function ('between').

41 . Non-Past (Imperfective) 3rd p.sg.masc.

Sidamo

(M. Moreno. Manuale di sidamo. Roma 1 940 , p. 156—159)
Commentary -by T. Vetoshkina

Basso mitt-e 1 nugCs-i 1 ar-e-si2 ba’-icc-i3 mitt-6 4 bet-o ill-
ino5 . Hakk-o'* bet-o 4 tamar-e-tti 6 minn-i-ra7 ' i-s-ino 8. Bit-u 9
tamar-a-nni10 am-a-si2 re’-itu11. Ann-i-si2^ wol-e12 ar-e 12 6q[-i5.
BUdden-o 4 am-a12 han-e bet-o1* gib-bdno13 . Si-ta-ssi-ra1'* yi-te15
tag-icc^d15 it-anno-hu17 gidd-o 4 wdr-tu11. Hakk-oh bit-i-ra 7 mitt-o'*
farass-i1- no5. Tamar-e-tti minn-i 18 da’ ~e-uote13 bet-o 4 "it-tdti"20
yi-no-si 21 fara&s-i1 "it-itto-ro22 rak-M 2 3 re'-dtto"21* . Budden-o
am-a-si "it-i”2 5 yi-tu-si 11 " hud-e 12 Si-tino-he-nna"25 . "Duw-dmo27
di 28 it-emo"2 9 yi-no5 .

127

Trans lation:

Once one king of (lit.: in) his-wife one son begot.

This son into-school (lit.: pupils ' -house-to) (he) made-
enter. The-son while-was-learning his-mother died. His-
father another wife took. The-stepmother (lit.:
bread mother) this son hated. Thinking tokill-him
(lit.: kills-him-for speaking) (she) put poison into

what-he-ate. This son had a horse (lit.: this son-for
one horse was) . From-the-school when-he-came, to-the-son
"don't-eat" said the-horse, "if-you-eat, at-once (lit.:
hastening) you-die". His-stepmother "eat" told-him "hun-
ger because-will-kill-you" . "I-am-satiated , I shall not
eat" he-said.

Notes:

1 . Thematic case masculine (< *ergative) .

2. -si — pronominal suffix 3rd p.sg.masc., Possessive
with nouns, Accusative-Dative with verbal forms ("him").
Cf. yl-no-si, yi-tu-si

3. Locative postposition < noun ba ’ - "place" + Singula-
tive suffix -ice-. Thematic case masc.

4. Absolute case masc.

5. Highland East Cushitic «New» Perfective of uncer-
tain origin, 3rd p.sg.masc.

6. Absolute case fem.pl.

7. Directive case -ra compounded with the Thematic
case -i.

8. Causative S-stirps (-s-), « New» Perfective 3rd p.
sg.masc.

9. Attributive (Genitive) case in -u used for the lo-
gical subject.

10. Dumessive (3rd p.sg.masc.) - a subordinate verbal
form denoting an action simultaneous with the action
denoted by the main predicate; formed from the Common
Cushitic suffixal Imperfective + suffix -nni.

11. « New» Perfective 3rd p.sg.fem. = 21.

12. Absolute case fem.

13. Highland East Cushitic « New » Imperfect ive , 3rd
p.sg.fem. (gibbdno < gibt&no) .

14. Finalis (3rd p.sg.fem.) — a subordinate verbal
form denoting the goal of the main action; formed from
the common Cushitic suffixal Imperfective + suffix -ra
(originally case suffix or postposition); -ssi - "him".

15. Common Cushitic suffixal Perfective (3rd p.sg.
fern.), used as a subordinate predicate in a coordinated
sentence before the main predicate.

16. Absolute case masc.: -icc- — Common Cushitic Sin-
gulative suffix.

17. Relative (3rd p.sg.masc.) — a verbal form denoting
the attributive clause which refers to the subject or
object of the main predicate; formed from the «New»
Imperfective by suffixation of the relative marker -hu
"which" .

18. Thematic case in an Ablative sense.

128

19. Temporalis (3rd p.sg.masc.) —a verbal form denot-
ing an action preceding the main action in time; formed
from the Common Cushitic suffixal Perfective by suffixa-
tion of the denominal postposition wote " time".

20. Prohibitive 2nd p.sg. (suffix -tdti) .

2 1 . deleted (=11).

22. Conditional 2nd p.sg.masc. — a verbal form denot-
ing real protasis; formed from the «New» Perfective by
suffixation of -rS.

23. Common Cushitic suffixal Perfective 2nd p.sg.

(rakke < rakte) ; preserved in subordinate clauses through
introduction of the «New» Perfective.

24. « New» Imperfective 2nd p.sg.

25. Imperative 2nd p.sg.

26. Temporalis-Causalis (3rd p.sg. fern.) — a verbal
form denoting time or cause of the main action; formed
from the « New» Perfective by suffixation of postposi-
tion -nna 'when, because'; -he - a pronominal 2nd p.sg.
Accusative-Dative suffix.

27. « New» Perfective 1st p.sg.

28. Negation particle.

29. « New» Imperfective 1st p.sg.

Bilin

(1. L.Reinisch. Die Bi lin-Spraohe in Nor dost Afrika. Wien 1 882.
2. Gospel of Mark in the Bilin or Bogos language. Vienna 1 882 .)
Commentary by T. Vetoshkina

(1) Gud’rab-id1 ' anbat-o 2 'k^ara3 lab- 'ra-^ik 4 guad-i^0 5 .

(2) Kelal 6 Tasa-Girgis-r-asP wark-z-a^-si 'arar-aoP .

(3) A ' * i-t 8 ad-o2 'ni3 ’ dan 6 Ar’a'dom-si10 kad’d-a^11 a’x-o2

U'W~W~Yi-t13 'ku-to13 'int-iras^-ma? 1 5

(5) Sim1* ' gab-a-t 17 'was-ra-sa'nd16 gu'ru-sz10 gdy-'s-t-la19 .

(6) QAa 'danta3 fi'ra-t3 ' arar-an 20 r ardr-ag-an21 ar’-igi22
’fdd-dkw 2 3 .

(7) Wu'rad ' naki-nas^u-ni-l'ka ?24

(8) d'a^ina6 was-'ra-ri23 'kir-ti2 6 .

(9) Zax-ag-'na21 ’xak^a-l26 labd-i ’raxu-na2 3 = ' xakwa 6 fax-ag-
’na-xP-al2 7+2 ° labd-i ’ raxu-na 2 9 .

(10) Bin Ayhud-ar 16 nuguz gan30

(11) I'na 31 ' kau 16 'gab-a-s32 was-ag-da’na-xar33 ax-dini-na'cft3''
tarzam-axP-VWAam33 gini'wa-s 10 nak-s-iri-lkVam36 .

Trans l.ation:

(1) Having begun in the morning, he ploughed until the
sun set (lit.: morning-for having-begun sun set-until he-
ploughed) .

(2) He got a silver brooch from Tasa-Girgis (lit.:
brooch Tasa-Girgis-of-he silver-of-he-Acc . he-got) .

9 287

129

(3) Having taken a girl, he gave (her) to his brother
Aradom, he being the elder (lit.: girl-Acc. having-taken
his brother Aradom-Acc. elder-was-which-he having-been
he-gave-him) .

(4) Have you come to kill me? (lit;: me-Acc. to-kill-
thou came-thou-whether) .

(5) After you hear the king's speech, send a messenger
to me (lit.: king's speech-Acc. you-hear-after messenger-
Acc. let-go-me) .

(6) A peasant sows not knowing whether he will get
the harvest or not. (lit.: peasant-Nom. ftuit-Acc. if-
he-gets if-he-does-not-rget not-knowing he-sows) .

(7) Why did they give (it) to you?

(8) The woman of whom you heard is dead.

(9) you have led us to water which we do not drink.

(10) This is Judea’s king.

(11) Since you do not understand the language of this
country, I shall provide you with an interpreter (lit.:
this land's speech-Acc. you-which-do-not-hear you-are-
because, which-translate-to-you man-Acc . I-shall-let-
give-to-you) .

Notes:

1. Dativus absolutus masc.

2. Secutive (3rd p.sg.m.) — a subordinate verb form
which denotes an action preceding or simultaneous with
the main action.

3. Absolute case (— Nominative), zero inflection.

4. Limitative (3rd p.sg.m.) — a subordinate verb form
which denotes the action expressing the limit of the
main action; formed by suffixation of the postposition
sik "until".

5. Perfective 3rd p.sg.m.; z — a thematic vowel.

6. Status constructus -“Absolute case.

7 . Full Genitive (= qualifier) , which carries the
gender-cum-number markers of the head noun (= qualified).
Unlike the short Genitive, it is in postposition to the
head noun. The case marker (here the Accusative) is ad-
ded to the last component of the NP.

8. Accusative case fern.

9. Possessive pronoun 3rd p.sg.m. ('his').

10. Accusative case masc.

11. Relative (here Past Relative 3rd p.sg.m.) — a verb
form denoting the attributive clause which refers to the
subject or object of the main predicate.

12. Perfective 3rd p.sg.m., -lu 3rd p.sg.m. pronominal
object marker.

13. Accusative case of the 1st p.sg. personal pro-
noun yi- (bound form) .

130

14. Finalis (2nd p.sg.) - a subordinate verb form denot-
ing an action which is the goal/aim of the main action.

15. Perfective 2nd p.sg.; -na — a general question mar-
ker .

16. Short Genitive, Cm. '-0 , f. -r) "see also n. 7.

17. Accusative case (fern.) of the nomen actionis
' gaba .

18. Postessive (2nd p.sg.) — a subordinate verb form
denoting an action closely preceding the main action;
formed by suffixing the postposition sd'na 'when'.

19. Causative 5-stirps (-s-) Imperative 2nd p.sg.; -la —
1st p.sg. pronominal object marker ('me').

20. Conditional (3rd p.sg.m.) - a subordinate verb
form denoting an action (= protasis) which conditions the
main action.

21. Negative form of the Conditional 3rd p.sg.m.

22. Abessive (3rd p.sg.m.), - a subordinate verb form
denoting the absence of an action accompanying the main
one (cf. in French sans + Infinitive).

23. Imperfective 3rd p.sg.m.

24. Perfective 3rd p.pl.; - a pronominal question
marker; -I'ka - 2nd p.sg. pronominal object marker

C 1 thee 1 ) .

25. Object Relative Past (— Perfective) 2nd p.sg.;

-rZ marks the 3rd p.sg. fern., of the head noun.

26. Perfective 3rd p.sg. fern.

27. Negative form of the Object Relative Non-Past
(= Imperfective) ; the short Relative (see the first
sentence) , unlike the full one (see the second sentence)
(a) is in preposition to the head noun, and (b) does not
take on the gender-cum-number markers of the head noun;
-awmarks the. 3rd p.sg.m. of the head noun (the same
marker as in the Genitive) .

28. -I marks the Allative case.

29. Perfective 2nd p.sg.; -na — 1st p.pl. pronominal
object marker.

30. Uninflected copula.

31. Demonstrative pronoun of the near deixis ('this').

32. Accusative case (masc.) of the nomen actionis
’gaba, cf . n . 17/'.

33. Negative form of the Subject Relative Non-Past
(= Imperfective) 2nd p.pl.

34. Causal (2nd &.pl.) - a subordinate verb form denot-
ing an action which causes the main action; expressed

by the postposition na'dt "because".

35. Subject Relative Non-Past (= Imperfective) 3rd
p.sg.m.; -lli°3m 2nd p.pl. pronominal object marker.

36. Causative S-stirps Futurum 1st p.sg.

9-2 287

131

(4) 0 m o t i a

No s amp 1 e s

(5) Egyptian

Old Egyptian

( Urkunden des agyptisohen Altertwns. I, Berlin, pp . 100—101).
Commentary by Yu.Ya.Perepelkin and I.M.Diakonoff

st w(y) m z‘,b, (i)r(y) Nhn , rdy w(y) hn.f m smr w't(y), (i)m(y)-
r’ hnt(yw)-s pr-' ; ns.n(.y) 4 (i)m(yw)-r’ hnt(yw) -A pr-", , wnw im;
ir.k(wy) r hst hn.f m in-t stp-z J, m ir-t w’t n(y)-swt, m irt 'h'w;
ir.k(wy) my kd r hst w(y) hm.f hr.s r (i)h-t nb... n Ikr(.y), n
w’b(.y) hr ib n(y) Igm.f... ink \v(y) m zs w'. k(wy) hn' z\b , (i)v(y)
Nhn w’.

T rans lation:

Now, (when) I (was) judge, keeper of Hieraconpolis ,
his majesty set me up as (his) only friend, the chief
of the hntyw-i (a social category) of the palace; 1 sup-
planted four chiefs of the Tgntyw-s of the palace who were
there; I did according to what his majesty praised in
preparing the guard, in preparing the way of the king,
in preparing the resting-place; I did so that his majesty
praised me for it exceedingly... because I was skilled,
because I was pleasant for the heart of his majesty...

I (was it who) made (things) into writing, being alone
with the judge, the only keeper of Hieraconpolis.

Not e s :

(Brackets denote parts of words not expressed in wri-
ting) .

st 'now' .

wy Dependent Personal pronoun, 1st p.Sg. (depending
on st) .
m ' in' .

m z‘b in (the quality of) judge; cf. m smr in (the
quality of) friend.

rdy 'to give', here 'to set up', verbal form sfm.f,
which we have conventionally called "Imperfective" (not
to confuse with the "Habitative" form of s3m.f), here
expressing the Past tense; 3rd p.Sg. masculine.
hm.f 'his majesty'.

w'ty 'only', Adjective with relative suffix -y .
pr lit. 'great (*J) house (pr)‘.

ns.n.y 'to supplant', verbal form sgm.n.f which we have
conventionally called "Perfective"; 1st p.Sg.

wnw one of the participles (PI.) of the verb 'to be'*
im ' there ' .

132

ir.kwy Qualitative-Stative , 1st p.Sg. 'I did, I made';
r ' to ' .

hsy to praise; the form fet is in the first case a pas-
sive participle,, in the second — a relative finite form.
ir-t making. Infinitive of iry (feminine) .
ny-swt 'king', construed as a phrase governed by the nota
genetivi .

w't way (feminine).

'h'w verbal noun from ' h' 'to stand, to stop'.
my kd lit. 'as (the) image', i.e., 'in a way. that'.
hr "'on'; hr.s same with the suffixed possessive pro-
noun of the 3rd p.f.Sg. (here 'it').
ih-t 'thing' (feminine).

nb 'every' (not in concord with the noun). The phrase
v iht nb means 'exceedingly'.

n 'for', here introduces a subordinate clause (in
the sense of 'because').

ikr.y, w’b. y verbal form s^m.f, 1st p.Sg.; cf. Sem. j t/iqr
' to fie rare , dear' .

n(y) nota genitivi.

ink Personal Independent pronoun (emphatic), 1st p.Sg.
iry Participle of the verb 'to do, to make'.
w' .kwy Qualitative-Stative, 1st p.Sg.- 'to be alone'.
w' one.

(6) Cha di a

Hausa

(G .Mischlich . Uber Sitten und Gebrauche in Hausa. In: "Mit-
teilungen des Seminars fur Orientalische Sprachen d. Fried-
rich-Wilhelm Universitat" , X,. III. Abt . , 1 907 , p. 155; cf.
M. A. Smirnova. Yazyk Khausa Moscow 1 960 , p. 69.)

Asalin hausawa an ae, wadansu mutane ne, wa da kane; su ka zo
daga kasal larabaua da matan su biu. Su ka zamna wani $e$i kusa da
kasal Bamo, sunansa Gabi, su ka yi bukoki, su na halbin namun segi,
don su ma-halba ne, har matar kanen nan ta haifi ■ ya. . .

Trans lation:

The origin of the Hausans, they say, (was that there)
were certain men, an elder and a younger brother; they
came from the land of the Arabs with their two wives.

They settled in a certain deserted place near to the land
of Barno , called Gabi, they built huts, (and) they were
hunting game, because they were hunters, until the wife
of this younger brother bore a daughter...

Not e s :

asali n.subst. 'origin'; -n nota genitivi.

hausawa n.subst. PI. (Sg. bahau&e) 'Hausans'.

an impersonal pronoun

& v. 'to tell ' .

wadansu pron.Pl. (Sg. wani ) 'certain'.

9-3 298

133

mutane n.subst.Pl. (Sg. mutum') 'men'.
ne copula.

wa n.subst. 'elder brother'.

da (1) conjunction 'and'; (2) preposition 'with'.
kane n.subst. 'younger brother’; -n nota genitivi
(used also with an adjectival attribute) .

20 v. 'to come' (cf. za to go, to walk) ; su ka zo 'they
came', Past tense 3rd p.m.Pl.
daga preposition 'from'.-

kasa, kasa n.subst. land; -l nota genitivi.
larabawa n.subst.Pl. (Sg . balarabe) Arabs (< Arab, al-
' arab) .

mata n.subst.Pl. (Sg. mace) 'women'; -n nota genitivi;
mata also Sg. 'wife', nota genitivi -r.

su possessive pronoun of the 3rd p.m.Pl.
biu 'two' .

zamna v. 'to settle'. Cf . zo.
want see wadansu.

3e$i n.subst, 'deserted place'.
kusa da prepositional phrase 'near to'.
suna v.subst. 'name'; -n nota genitivi + sa posses-
sive pronoun of the 3rd p.m.Sg.
yi v. 'to make', Cf. zo.
buka, PI. bukoki n.subst. 'hut'.

halbi 'hunt'; su na halbi 3rd p.m.Pl. Imperfective ;
the form halbi being a (verbal) noun, it is construed
as such with the object in the Genitive, governed by the
nota genitivi -n.

nama n.subst. 'meat'; with nota genitivi namu-n; namun
lezi idiom 'game', lit. 'meat of the deserted place'.
don preposition; here 'because'.
su pron. 'they' .

ma-halb-a n.subst. PI. (Sg. ma-halbi ) 'hunters'.
har 'until ' .

nan demonstrative pronoun.

haifi v. 'to bear (a child)'; ta(-n) haifi 3rd p.f.Sg.
Perfective.

i/a n.subst. 'daughter'.

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ABBREVIATIONS

AAL — Afroasiatic Linguistics, Malibu.

AM — Africans Marburgensia, Marburg.

AO — Archiv orientSlni, Krakow.

BSOAS — Bulletin of the Shool of oriental and African Studies,
University of London, London.

GLECS — Groupe linguistique des etudes chamito-semitiques , Paris.
JNES — Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Chicago.

JSS — Journal of Semitic Studies, Manchester.

JWAL — Journal of West African Languages.

LED IV — Lingvisticheskaya rekonstruktsiya i drevneyshaya istoriya
Vostoka (Linguistic reconstruction and prehistory of the

East). M., 1984.

PPPIK — Pismennyye pamyatniki. i pronlemy istorii kultury narodov

Vostoka (Written monuments and problems of cultural history
of peoples of the East) . GNS — Godichnaya nauchnaya sessiya
LO IV AN SSSR (Annual scholars' session of the Leningrad
section of the Institute of Oriental Studies, USSR Academy
of Sciences) . K.

VDI — Vestnik drevney istorii (Herald of Ancient History) . M.

SISAlh — v. Bibliography.

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